


when your gay wizarding crush thinks she is straight

by galatea_and_acis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Asexual Harry Potter, Closeted Harry Potter, Everybody Lives, F/F, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Femme Lesbians, Femslash, Fluff, GAY DAPHNE, Gen, Good Albus Dumbledore, Happy Ending, Harry Potter Has ADHD, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Humor, Magical Theory (Harry Potter), Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Mentor Albus Dumbledore, Mutual Pining, Narcissism, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Oblivious Harry Potter, Parent Sirius Black, Powerful Harry Potter, Pureblood Culture (Harry Potter), Rich Harry Potter, Supportive Ron Weasley, The sorting hat puts you in Slytherin based on how dramatic you are, Travelling the world with Albus Dumbledore, Tupac - Freeform, Useless Lesbians, Worldbuilding, fem!harry is powerful but she's completely oblivious about it, gay haphne, reupload
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29400924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galatea_and_acis/pseuds/galatea_and_acis
Summary: in which lesbian fem!harry kisses a boy and daphne greengrass despairs about her straight girl crush. fluffy gay 8th year haphne inside.[reuploaded after doxxing attempt]
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore & Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald, Daphne Greengrass & Pansy Parkinson, Daphne Greengrass/Harry Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, Tracey Davis & Daphne Greengrass, Tracey Davis & Pansy Parkinson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 60





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AutumnSouls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutumnSouls/gifts).



> Hey guys.  
> I'm writing Haphne and I'm [Still Alive (Portal OST).](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI)  
> I had to delete this work after somebody who knew my IRL name threatened me with doxxing etc.
> 
> That event seems to have passed now, however! So here is the reupload. 
> 
> If you have any friends who missed the fic, please feel free to send them the new copy! 
> 
> Thank you guys for all your nice comments last time. <3\. New chapter soon.

**October 11, Slytherin Common Room.**

Tracey entered the common room to find her best friend sunk so far down in the campy black leather Slytherin armchair that she was almost at level with the coffee table in front of it.

Tracey thought Daphne looked like a deep sea fish brought to normal altitude.

“Daph — what — what are you doing?” Tracey asked.

Daphne said nothing.

“You look ridiculous,” Tracey sighed. "Are ridiculous, in fact."

Daphne looked up at Tracey and furrowed her eyebrows at her in a vaguely irritated manner.

“Do you want to not talk about it?” Tracey asked her.

Daphne smiled until she remembered why she was catatonic in the first place, and then then managed to sink down even _further_ in the chair.

Tracey sighed, putting a hand to her forehead.

“Please don’t tell me you’re acting like this because of Longbottom dating Potter.”

Daphne sank down even further with an extremely melodramatic sigh. 

Tracey yelled across the common room. “Blaise — how long has Daphne been like this?”

“About since she came back from Arithmancy.”

“You’ve been slothing in this chair for fifteen minutes? What happened?” 

Blaise yelled back across the room, “She saw Longbottom kiss the Girl-who-”

Tracey heard a thud and an “ARGH!” — Daphne had tried to sink even further down the armchair but slipped down and was now stuck under the coffee table.

Tracey bent down to check if her friend was okay.

“Daph — are you — don’t you think this is a bit too much?” she asked, biting her lip at her histrionic friend. Tracey felt like she was about to hear Shakespeare quotes about unrequited love at any moment.

Daphne started tracing patterns in the coffee table, leaving small ice crystals as her fingers dusted circles and spirals around it.

Tracey absently thought her friend should use her talent for wandless ice magic at something other than theatrics for a woman who did not deserve her. Alas. 

She got on her knees and slowly tugged Daphne out from under the table. “Okay Greengrass, up we get, no more sprawling, no more sobbing.”

“I’m not sobbing, Trace,” she mumbled irritably, kicking her legs around so she could get out. “I’m moping; I am brooding; I am contemplating in my pit of despair —”

“Please don’t start quoting Shakespeare at me.”

“A straight girl crush doth not die; ‘tis only flung out down to a secreth lodging of the mind where it hides, curl'd and wounded—” 

“Daph ..."

“It’s not Shakespeare, which you would know _if_ you had _read_ the collection I gave you—”

“A month ago,” Tracey argued, still tugging a kicking Daphne out under the table. At least she was talking to her now.

“I read it in —”

“Yes, you read very quickly, good student, big O.W.L scores, now get up,” Tracey said, finally managing to get the mess of envious blonde hair out from the table. 

Somehow Daphne Greengrass still managed to look like a renaissance Botticelli painting despite having just being dragged out from under a coffee table floor which possibly had not been cleaned since 1627. 

Daphne sighed.

“Come on,” said Tracey softly, pulling on Daphne’s hand and gesturing her head towards their dorm.

“Happy moping!” Blaise yelled on their way back & got a resounding “Fuck off Blaise,” from Tracey.

Tracey brought Daphne into the dorm and closed the door — Pansy was off photographing unicorns or something.

Tracey turned into her friend and hugged her. “Hey now,” she said. “It’ll be alright. Hey. You’ll be okay.”  
  


* * *

**October 11, Slytherin Common Room, that Gloomy Place by the Corner.**

“Did you enjoy being miserable?” Blaise asked as Tracey sat down

“We’re in Slytherin, Blaise, everybody here enjoys being miserable,” Pansy said, sideways in an armchair and flipping through her magical photo reel.

“Very funny,” Tracey said. 

She watched the fishes for a few minutes to the sound of Blaise’s scribbling and Pansy’s occasional hums of approval at her own photography.

“So,” Blaise stopped writing, “any suggestions on how we get Greengrass out of her dolour?” 

“Finally you say something. Do we even know if Iris Potter could be _into_ women? Do you have some kind of Lesbian-Revealing charms in your mother’s spellbooks, Blaise?” Pansy asked.

“A Lesbian-Revealing Charm would break Tugwood’s laws, Pansy, as you well know.”

Tracey continued to watch out into the Black Lake. One big and particularly mean fish reminded her of Daphne in her armchair. 

Tracey sighed.

Pansy spoke, “Tracey, I’ve been telling you this for years. She needs to move on. I know there’s some very charming girls in Ravenclaw that would be delighted to have Daphne Greengrass even _talk_ to them."

"I agree with everything she just said," Blaise agreed wisely.

"Rather than flutter around about some Gryffindor girl, Saviour of the World or not, we should work on some stress relief for Daphne instead. We can make some wizarding records of that Muggle musician Greengrass likes - Tupac?"

* * *

**October 11, That Very Comfy Place in the Library.**

Ron was trying to play chess against himself — succeeding, somehow.

"How are you doing that?" Hermione asked

"Well, I just, close off one part of my mind to the other."

"You're using occlumency to play chess against yourself?"

"Yes."

Hermione made a strangled noise.

"Why are people so into kissing?" Iris asked suddenly over the library table. "I don't get it."

“Kissing Neville that bad?” Ron asked, as his pawn killed his other pawn.

"Well i mean, it was — it was" — she paused to think. "The pressure was nice.”

Iris frowned and turned to Hermione. “How is it supposed to feel, exactly?"

"Well, not to get too effusive” — Hermione pushed a few books around herself — “and so much of literature dynamises on this, and of course everybody is different, it depends if you like the person, and to simplify it to a few feelings would be reductionist —”

“Hermione —” Ron tried to interrupt. 

Hermione stared him down and plowed on “ _But_ I think most good kisses, you just feel happy, exhilarated, all you can think of is the other person."

Iris was ripping a small parchment in her hands into thirty pieces. “Well — I just felt awkward, like I was dissociating from my body. And I didn’t think about Neville at all, I just thought about carrots.”

"Carrots?" 

Iris frowned. "Yes, I was thinking about growing carrots, and if my lips tasted of carrots."

"And — nothing else?"

"No. I think it was because we just had a History of Magic lesson about magical agriculture. But, I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to _zone out_ about agriculture."

“Maybe he’s just a bad kisser?” Ron asked, grimacing a bit.

Iris cringed. “Do you remember the months when Neville dated Lavender, Ron? Imagine falling asleep every night to Lavender yapping to Parvati about how _great_ a kisser Neville Longbottom is, how his _tongue_ —”

“Okay, woah, I get it,” Ron held his hands up.

“Maybe — you just don't feel anything for Neville?” Hermione asked.

"But I like Neville a lot, he's fantastic, he's great, he's — yeah," Iris frowned. "Really great. Perfect." 

There was an awkward silence.

Iris leaned backwards, resting against the bookshelf. "Urgh. I defeated Voldemort only to be cursed with the ability to only think of carrots when trying to kiss a boy? Great. I'm even more of a loony. What next? Do I need to crush up antidepressive moon rockets and sprinkle them over my breakfast for the rest of my life to be able to form romantic connections? Oh, sorry, Neville, not to bother you, it’s just; I feel dead inside and can’t do anything but dissociate and think about agriculture when kissing you.”  
  
“Maybe you should get some of that psychic therapy” — “Psychotherapy” — “that Hermione has been talking about,” Ron said.

“Ron, you can’t just tell Iris to get therapy —”

“But — that’s what you do all the time?” Ron said. 

“Iris, maybe talk to Neville about how you feel?" Hermione asked.

Iris cringed. "No, I want to fix this. I want to be able to actually _feel_ something. Not just — this great big empty hole of empty. I don't want to be weird or different or — broken." Iris kept ripping the parchment pieces in her hand with increasing furor as she talked, and suddenly, Iris' wandless magic had set them aflame. 

They burst into the air, and Ron's chess pieces scrambled to fight off the burning parchment falling onto their board.

Iris cringed. "I have to go fly," she said, and left the table. 

* * *

**October 11, The Mountains Outside the Grounds.**

She loved flying. All her fears went away, her anxieties, ruminations, worries. It was just the wind, her joy, and the feeling of going 200 miles an hour on an illegally modified Firebolt. 

And quite precarious stunts through tiny gaps between the trees in the forbidden forest. And the mountains. And below the bridge. And loop-de-loops with hipogriffs.

It was fun, it was great, it was exhilarating. She loved it.

Why couldn’t kissing be like flying?

She knew she was being irrational and stubborn — maybe a bit stupid. If she didn’t feel anything kissing Neville, she probably was just not that into him. Easy, move on. It would suck to hurt Neville’s feelings, but she didn’t want to lead him on, either, which would just hurt him more.

But, the crunch, and the cause of her present stubbornness with Neville — she hadn’t _ever been_ into any boy. Hadn’t even had the twinge or the urge.

And Neville surely is the best boy there is. Right? Kind eyes, nice smile, he was tall, sweet, magically talented, and most importantly, he murdered a Horcrux with a sword. Gryffindor’s sword, to boot. That was pretty hot, right? Or was supposed to be.

Everybody around her acted as if Neville was Cedric 3.0, Deluxe limited edition. 

But she just felt, well, nothing. And she didn't understand it. 

Was this some part of her scar? Did Tom’s inability to love rub off on her? 

Of course, not in the platonic way - she loved Hermione, Ron, Sirius, Remus, Hagrid - she loved them so much it hurt. 

And Voldemort had loved people in friendly ways too, right? Like his snake. And the personification of power. And himself. And Snape. Okay, maybe not Snape. 

But he hadn’t ever loved anybody _romantically_. 

Did she get that like she got his parseltongue? Some sort of defect from being born from a love potion?

“Ha ha ha,” she imagined a cartoonish Voldemort saying. “You are now a lonely loser like me, ha ha ha.”

Urgh.

She was supposed to get married and stuff, right? That was how it was supposed to go.

One, save the world, two, live happily ever after, three, Hermione and Ron gets 2.5 kids, and she gets 2.5 kids with some dashing, handsome, something something man. All was well. 

But if she couldn't have feelings for any boy — if she was broken because of Voldemort — then she would have to be alone for the rest of her life. Or _pretend_ to be in love with somebody.

Iris cringed.

She’d been having obsessive thoughts recently about growing old, everybody else getting together, and instead of her getting a husband she’d become like Mrs. Figg. Or like Aunt Marge. Bathilda Bagshot. She still remembered, with a tinge of horror, Mrs. Figg's smell of old cabbage. 

And that was the point of the matter really, the idea of being alone and abandoned forever was horrible. Awful. 

How would she even fix this? 

She swooped past a mountain top. 

Should she ask Dumbledore?

Felt a bit too insignificant an issue.

Okay, who was she kidding, Dumbledore would talk to her about Mars Bars for two hours if she wanted.

Still, romantic issues wasn't something she wanted to talk about with… well ... not even an old person, a Super Old Person, given Dumbledore was like a hundred and something. 

Although, she could just avoid telling him the specific _carrot incident,_ just the “Help, I can’t develop feelings for anybody and I’m afraid it’s due to Voldemort” part.

Right. 

She landed at the mountain she wanted to reach and started collecting the rare decennial flowers for Remus’ birthday gift.  
  


* * *

**October 12, The Secluded Wall Only He Himself Knew About**

It was a most beautiful night. The stars were out. He sat on a crenellation high above the grounds, with a sublime view. And most importantly, he was completely alone.

Loneliness, that pristine lady.

Draco Malfoy reached into his robes, brought out his pack of cigarettes, and opened it with refined, _noble dexterity —_

Suddenly the pack felt like it was the icy heart of a Lethifold. Fire from the cold ran up the nerves of his fingers, and he immediately dropped the pack —

Right into the waiting hand of Daphne Greengrass.

“Thank you, Malfoy, these have now been requisitioned by the Greengrass Estate.” 

“What!? Greengrass, give them back!”

She stuck her tongue out, sitting on the crenel next to him. “Make me.”

Bugger, Draco thought.

She took one long black cigarette out of the pack. “Actually, Malfoy, you can have _one_.”

Draco accepted the cigarette sullenly. 

They sat in silence and lit up with their wands.

“Why do we fall in love with people who don’t love us back?” Daphne asked. 

“I don’t know, I never asked to be part of this whole operation.”

“Hmm?”

“Life. I would like to make a complaint with the director of this theater.”

Daphne smiled.

“But, really, it’s not like I looked over the opposite end of the Great Hall, thought ‘Oh, she’s such a disaster, she must be into girls,’ and fell in love with her. What really happened was more along the line of, well, I looked at her, and I thought — Wow, hot. And then the more I looked the more I found out. Good things, Draco.” Daphne leaned back. “Like her _heart_ , as much as you might hate feelings. Why must she kiss Longbottom? In fact, why must she kiss boys at all?” Daphne asked existentially. 

“Maybe I should become a Dark Lord. Dark Lady Greengrass, The Ice Queen. Has a nice ring to it, no? That’s one way for her to pay attention to me. Oh no Potter, the children in this orphanage are going to freeze to death! Oh no Potter, I’m tied up and can’t do the counterhex. You must untie me and _force_ me to do the spell. Ah, curse your heroic ways!”

“And when you get thrown in Azkaban, you’ll charm the dementors to release you?” Draco sighed. 

“Of course. They love the cold. I’m practically a dementor already anyway, with the absolute misery I currently extrude.” 

She inhaled.

“Tasteful cigarettes, by the way. Your sacrifice will not go unremembered when I become evil.”

She flicked the cigarette, ash falling down into the mouth of a gargoyle many meters below.

“I’m just so pathetic, Malfoy. Of course, that’s why I come to smoke with _you_ _—_ ”

“Greengrass.”

“Sorry, Draco, that was unkind. You’re very respectable. I’m just frustrated with myself for falling ruinously in love with a straight girl who has never spoken to me. Who does that? A pathetic person. Me. Greengrass Scion Daphne. Worst of all is that I started to unconsciously believe I had a chance, too, as much as I tried to scalpel that insidious thought. Remember the yule ball and her disastrous date with Diggory? And she’s been so obviously uninterested in boys over _years_ that I started to feel like, you know, I just — urgh. I just don’t know why I have to feel like such _garbage_ , Malfoy. I don’t — I don’t understand.”

“Want to head inside, before you throw yourself off the crenellations?” 

“Malfoy, come _on_ , I would never do that in these robes. If I’m going to be a corpse I’d want to be a good-looking one."

She threw the black cigarette down into the gargoyle’s mouth. It came to life and started smoking it. The gargoyles around it started moving too, looking at it in rich jealousy. 

“Let’s go,” she said, frowning at the spectacle below.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> />


	2. Chapter 2

**October 13, Headmaster's Office.**

“Iris,” Dumbledore said, “I can assure you that Voldemort did not remove your ability to love. There is nothing _wrong_ with you.”

Dumbledore took off his half-moon glasses and rubbed his eyes. He looked exhausted.

“Iris, have you considered that you might simply prefer the fairer sex?”

Iris spilled her hot chocolate all over her robes. 

Dumbledore had called her gay?!

“What? I don’t — I mean — wouldn’t I know? I mean, what — that — that makes no sense,” she said, scrunching up her face.

Dumbledore was still rubbing his eyes and looked as if this conversation embarrassed him to the point of deep, terrible pain.

“Iris, please relax,” he sighed. “I do not believe I can give you any answers here, except the opportunity to consider the possibility.”

“But — but — _what_?” 

Dumbledore put his glasses back on and blinked owlishly into the distance. “Remember that time we met a Veela in Diagon Alley? If I recall correctly you dropped a bag with twenty thousand galleons on the street.”

“Well, I was embarrassed because of… how… pretty... she was...”

“There was also the time when we met the Most Magical Elector—Queen of Bohemia and you became temporarily mute in the throne room. Or that Vampire we met in Albania, the Parisian actress...” Dumbledore frowned. “I am not saying that these instances conclude anything, just that they — well — that you might want to scrutinize this possibility with your mental eyeballs.”  
  
Iris’ real pupils were in fact the size of two bumblebees, as her brain trawled through her own memories.

Dumbledore seemed to slowly recover from the awkwardness of having to jog his student's brain about the possibility of her homoromanticism. He stopped blinking owlishly into the distance, and looked directly at her.

“At any rate, you are most certainly _not_ broken, Iris. It is fine to not desire any romantic relationship at all — my own brother Aberforth is one such example, and you would not want to call him broken — actually, maybe he is a bit broken." Dumbledore frowned. “But not because of his aromanticism, certainly.”

“Perhaps it would be best to adjourn and have some time to think to yourself.”

“Yeah,” she whispered under the weight of her mental trawling.

A brief silence ensued.

“Did Voldemort make me gay?”

Dumbledore actually groaned. 

She laughed. “Okay, no, sorry, that was just a joke.”

* * *

**October 13, Gryffindor Dorms.**

She pinged her mirror. Remus and Sirius coalesced on the other side, showing a view of their dinner table, Remus sipping his darjeeling. 

“Dumbledore told me I was gay,” she said.

“Er, what, Iris?” Sirius asked as Remus’ sipping became uneven.

“Or — well — he didn’t tell me I _was_ gay, just sort of, strongly suggested it, and told me I should scrutinize it with my eyes. My brain’s eyes, I mean.”

“Iris, sorry, what — why — why is Dumbledore talking to you about … your brain eyes… and being homosexual?” Remus asked. 

“Um. Well. I’ve — uh — sort of been, thinking that, that, uh…”

Iris was quite sure that Sirius and Remus would not be terribly enchanted to hear about her thinking she was broken for the past months. And if she did tell them, she would rather do that in real life, and not through the mirror. It would be like breaking up over the phone, she thought. Or by owl.

“I just — I asked him about something, that, I felt bad about — well — and he… told me… I might be gay.” 

“You know you can speak to us anytime, right?” Sirius said, which just made her feel a bit bad. In fact, this was the reverse of what Sirius Black was trying to accomplish.

“It was Neville,” she expanded. “That. I felt bad about. Not feeling anything, about him. I’ve been, er, trying to date. Boys. But. It hasn’t gone that well.” 

“Frank and Alice’s son, right?” Sirius said, leaning back on his chair. “I didn’t know you two were dating! Iris!”

“Well, I didn’t know it was going to go anywhere! So I didn’t want to tell you before I knew. Although, I mean, I did consider if I should marry him.”

Remus’ eyes boggled. 

Sirius looked alarmingly at Remus, wondering if their parenting was indeed that shit.

Iris did catch on to the insanity of what she just said.

“I just — I became really obsessed with… well … I haven’t ever been in a relationship, and everybody else has for years now, and, I wasn’t sure if I even could, because, the truth is, that — I still feel broken. I still feel like there’s something wrong with me, or that I’m not right, or that I’m abnormal and wrong. And I still feel like that nobody wants me here, and that I should really just scuttle back to my cupboard. And I — I started to feel like maybe me not being — into those kinds of things — boys, I mean — was because I really was broken, that it’s because of Voldemort, or the Dursleys, or something, and that I'll always be like this. And I really cottoned onto it, like, aha! Finally, Iris, look how we were right all this time. Look what Voldemort did to you! You sod!”

Sirius and Remus looked shocked.

She did not intend for this to turn into an avalanche of a confession, but her tongue kept running away with her. Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the worst liar of them all.

(It was Iris Potter.)

“Please don’t feel bad,” she said, “it’s my fault that I don’t — that I don’t talk about these things. It’s just really hard when — when everybody around you is getting together, and… you just… feel out of place. Like you’re the piece in the puzzle box that the dog chewed on. And it’s also, I mean, there’s this weird pressure — to get with somebody. Like it feels like everybody is expecting me to get married and become an auror and do that for nineteen years until I send my children with awful names like Fucko Fuckup or Albus Severus to Hogwarts. And if I don’t find my sweetheart soon, I’ll just become really ancient and withered and smell like cabbage, forever. Eternal cabbage."

“And also — I really do want to be with somebody, you know? But I just — I don’t feel anything _at all_. Not even when I’m thinking about my ideal future husband. It’s just nothing. Great big ball of empty.” She laughed with a tinge of sadness. “So I really hope that Dumbledore was actually right and it’s just because I’m cripplingly oblivious and that all this time I’ve just been _gay_ , and not broken or _wrong_ , or because Tom Riddle cursed me to be an equally miserable loser.”

“Floo back to the house, Iris,” Sirius said softly. “We’ll figure things out, alright?”

* * *

**October 14, Gryffindor Table at Breakfast.**

She sat down with Hermione and Ron the day after, having sent off a patronus to them last night that she would be staying over at Sirius’.

“I’m breaking up with Neville.”

Ron looked slightly scared. Hermione looked mostly confused.

“That’s… good, Iris?” Hermione said. “But, I — yesterday, you were really set on you two working out?”

“Yeah, well, er…”

She told them what she had told Sirius and Remus in the mirror, and their conversations after.

Hermione’s hands were in front of her mouth. “Oh god! I’ve been so heteronormative that— “

“Hermione, stop — stop!” Iris put her palm on Hermione’s mouth. “No self-recrimination. It was up to me to figure it out. I still don’t know whether I am, well, into girls. I think I might be. But I think the real issue was probably the ‘feeling broken’ thing. And I feel better about that now. It helped a lot to talk about it with Remus and Sirius.”

“See, psychic therapy, it works,” Ron said, and Hermione elbowed him. Iris laughed.

“Have you talked to Neville yet?” Hermione asked. “Do you think he will be hurt?”

“Not more hurt than if I lead him on, I think.”

“Wait,” Ron said, “so with Cho Chang, were you really just crushing on her?” 

Iris laughed. “I mean, maybe? I don’t know.”

* * *

**October 14, That Lovely Alcove With the Nice View of the Grounds.**

“I’m sorry, Neville, but I think I’m gay.”

His eyes widened. “Oh, that explains a lot.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s alright.”

What Iris did not account for was the Hogwarts rumor mill.

Neville told the reason behind their breakup to Seamus, swearing him to secrecy, which meant that Dean knew it before lunch. And then Lavender knew it by quarter past, then Parvati, then all of Gryffindor girls year three to six (how Parvati managed this so expediently is still unclear). Then Ravenclaw, then Hufflepuff, and then, finally:

* * *

**October 14, Slytherin Common Room, late in the day.**

“We can’t tell Daphne without putting it — carefully,” Pansy said. “She’s going to get delusions of grandeur.”

“You’re right,” Tracey said grimly.

She braced herself and went into their dorms.

_𝅘𝅥𝅮 I won't deny it, I'm a straight ridah_

_You don't wanna fuck with me_

_Got the police bustin' at me_

_But they can't do nothin' to a G 𝅘𝅥𝅮_

Daphne was laying on the bed, flipping her spellbook to Tupac.

“Daph?” 

“Yes, Tracey?”

“It’s just —” Tracey paused. “Er, she’s gay.”

Wow, so much for putting things carefully, Tracey Davis. Then she thought ‘Oh no’, for Daphne’s pupils were dilating.

“She broke up with Longbottom, saying she realized she was only into women —”

“I was right!” 

With a burst of energy Daphne shot out of the room.

Tracey went to move after her, but Pansy’s hands grabbed her arm in the corridor outside the dorms.

“Give her 30 minutes,” she said. “There’s no way you’ll be able to get a word in edgewise right now.”

She did indeed come back thirty minutes later, bearing with her an extensively colored and earmarked notebook.

“Look, I channeled my obsessiveness into something productive,” Daphne said.

“What is it?” Pansy asked.

“It’s my plan to seduce Iris Potter,” Daphne said, and Pansy groaned (delicately). “I am going to approach her in an offer of friendship, being I too am a Girl Who Loves Other Girls, giving her my Mentorship and Guidance, and then engaging in a Highly Unethical yet Undeniably Delectable teacher-student romance, springing my unforgiving grindylow trap right under her long legs.” 

“Great,” Pansy sighed. “Well, I guess we might as well help you with this.”

* * *

**October 16, That Very Comfy Place in the Library.**

“The entire school knows,” Iris groaned. “How did this even happen?”

Ron frowned. “I didn’t think Neville was such a gossip.” 

“He isn’t!” Iris said. “He only told Seamus!”

“No point in assigning blame now,” Hermione said briskly. “In fact —”

A beautiful shadow was suddenly over their table.

“Potter?” somebody asked politely.

Oh no, Iris thought. She did not need this right now, with the whole school knowing she was gay.

Iris had seen this student before, when walking in the halls — she didn’t know her name, she just mentally named her Incredibly Pretty Blonde Slytherin. Sometimes she’d walk past Iris when exiting class and Iris would just — stare, as pure hair of flax-gold streaked past her undeserving eyes. 

Honestly, it’s a bit ridiculous how she didn’t realize that she might like girls earlier. What the hell, Iris.

Oh wait, she had to say something before it got awkward. 

“Oh, er, yeah?”

“I am also into girls. I wanted to offer my friendship in the event that you wanted somebody to talk to about it.”

Half of Iris’ brain was filled with ringing bells.

Incredibly Pretty Blonde Slytherin was into girls? Gosh, this would be humiliating. She probably only dated Veelas and would have to awkwardly tip—toe around Iris’ lower league of sycophant British witches who dated the Girl—Who—Lived for fame and galleons. 

The other half was, frankly, glad and excited. And as she was used to being humiliated, she, well… 

“Oh,” Iris said, smiling. “Oh, sure, yeah. I’d love to.”

“Wonderful,” Slytherin Blonde said, and if Iris wasn’t sure of her homoromanticism then, she was now. 

Yikes, she thought.  
  
Blonde then walked off, saying she’d send an owl.

“Wait, wait, so, I actually don’t know her name, who —”

“Iris, you’ve been going to school with her for 7 years!” Hermione said.

“Well, I recognize her! I’ve looked at her tons.”

Ron waggled his eyebrows. Iris punched him in the arm.

“That’s Daphne Greengrass, Iris.”

“Wait, that’s Daphne Greengrass? With the way you talked about her in fifth year, I thought she was some kind of demon.”

Hermione frowned. “I never said anything negative about her.” 

“You were just very — vitriolic — about her Arithmancy performance.”

Hermione furrowed her eyebrows, as if angered by the memory. She sighed. “I’m glad though that you might find a friend, Iris —”

Ron made kissing noises.

Iris punched his arm again.

  



	3. Chapter 3

**October 16, Slytherin Common Room, late in the day.**

“Blaise, have you seen Daphne?” Tracey asked, Pansy in tow. 

“In the dorms, I believe,” Blaise said, huddling over a book with Theo.

But when they did enter the dorms, they found them quite different. Daphne had transformed the wall by her bed into a magical painting of a tropical beach, complete with a magical sun shining down upon her.

“What is this?” Pansy asked.

Daphne lowered her Zabini x Balmain sunglasses to look cunningly at them.

“Did you set this up just so we would walk in on you like this?” Pansy demanded.

“I am resting on my laurels, Pansy, Trace. Imagine! Friend of the Girl-Who-Lived. It’s beautiful,” she declared, staring at them as she sipped on her strawberry martini. 

“Just don’t let any sun rays come over in my bed,” Pansy said, moving over to her own. “I don’t wear SPF at night, and as far as I’m concerned, I will not go wrinkly due to your penchants.”

Daphne looked horrified. “Pansy! I would never use actual ultraviolet rays!” She turned to Tracey. “Trace, tell her I wouldn’t!” 

Tracey sighed, for there was little worse than when Pansy and Daphne descended into shared vanity. 

“Pansy, Daphne wouldn’t use ultraviolet rays,” she sighed.

Pansy huffed.

Tracey often thought it was a miracle that she survived eight years in a dorm with two witches so indefatigably narcissistic.

“Anyway, Pansy, I can be allowed to celebrate that my plan _worked!_ ”

“Don’t count your vials before they’re brewed, Greengrass, you haven’t even had a real conversation with her yet. And what will you do once Iris Potter realizes you are out for her heart?”

Daphne narrowed her eyes. “Kiss her.” 

Daphne’s attempt at a tough girl look was completely ruined by the fact that she blushed uncontrollably. 

“I’m just happy that it’s all working out,” Daphne broke off. “And, honestly, I can probably subsist on just being her friend. Like how vampires can subsist on blood oranges, even if it isn’t the real deal — er, the real blood. You know, if they’re vegan.”

She paused, and then smiled. “But gosh, she is actually _gay_. Can you imagine? After all this time? Always? Pansy — it is time for full honesty. You must tell me all my aesthetic deficits so that I can correct them,” she said, with the utmost seriousness.

Pansy was fiddling with her camera in her bed. “Oh, I’m afraid there are too many to mention,” she muttered.

“I am serious, Pansy. I need to be my best.” 

Tracey interceded, knowing full well that Pansy harbored a secret, never-to-be-admitted, burning jealousy of Daphne’s infuriatingly effortless handsomeness.

“It’s fine Daph, I can do it.”

“Tracey, your eyes are undoubtedly blinded by years of affection and friendship. I do not know if I can trust your critical sense.”

Pansy sighed. “You’ll be fine.”

“What if she hates my nose?” Daphne said.

“Get a new one.”

Daphne grumbled. 

* * *

**October 19, Gryffindor Table at Breakfast.**

As she was eating, suddenly Malfoy’s owl landed across her. 

Huh. Iris frowned. Why would Malfoy send her a letter? 

Her mind instantly went to suicide note. 

Why would Malfoy send her his suicide note, Iris wondered, opening the letter. 

Oh, it was a message from Greengrass. Meet me so-and-so.

“Oh, she must have a similar owl to Malfoy,” Iris said.

“Yeah?” Ron asked

“I thought it was a suicide note from Malfoy,” Iris muttered

Ron spit out his pumpkin juice laughing

“Iris! A suicide note? By _owl_? From Malfoy? What, you think he just — and sent you a dramatic letter?”

“Well, yeah,” she said, nonplussed.

Ron kept laughing

“What’s so funny?” Iris frowned

“Malfoy — Iris, by owl — that was your first thought _?_ ”

“Yeah, By the time you get this Iris Potter, I will be **dead**. That kind of stuff. Like Regulus. They’re cousins, you know. Anyway, look at how she writes her signature!” 

“Er?” he said, accepting the letter.

“Look at how nice that D is! What the fuck?” 

“Oh, er, sure,” he said, looking at the signature.

Ron peered closer.

“Wow, that really is a nice D.” 

Iris started to snigger.

Ron sniggered in response.

“What is wrong with both of you?” Hermione asked.. 

"A really nice D," sniggered Iris. 

Hermione sighed into her oatmeal.

* * *

**October 19, Slytherin Table at Breakfast.**

“Greengrass, what is wrong with you,” Malfoy drawled.

“Hmm?”

“Literally a few days ago you were crying to me on a _wall,_ and now you’re running around with all the energy in the world, and — you’re eating your breakfast on the floor!” 

Daphne was indeed sitting on the great hall floor, eating her breakfast behind the back of Tracey Davis.

“I need to be hidden to spy on Iris Potter getting my owl,” Daphne said with a no-nonsense approach. “Also, by the by, I borrowed yours.”

“What!?” Draco said. “Greengrass — you can’t just — take people’s owls!”

“Well, your owl thought otherwise.”

Draco Malfoy groaned.

“Greengrass, you of all people should know the purpose of manners! For the sanctity of the social contract! I would expect this from Bulstrode, perhaps, or Greg and Vince, not — Greengrass, why are you _eating_ on the _floor_!” 

He said the last bit as if he was about to cry. 

“Some things are more important than manners,” Daphne whispered, looking through the folds of Tracey’s robes at Iris Potter.

“Oh finally, here comes Slughorn,” Draco muttered.

“Daphne, my girl, why — are you on the floor?”

“I’m spying.”

“Oh, I see, I see,” Slughorn said courteously, even though he didn’t see at all. “By the way, now that I have you, can you tell your father I most appreciated the recent vintage? And that I have some new potions for your uncle to examine. I would owl him, but you know how difficult he is to contact, my dear.”

“I will, Professor,” she said.

“Brilliant,” Slughorn boomed, and walked back up to the teacher’s table.

“Unholy quaffles,” Draco muttered. “This world is unfair.” 

* * *

**October 19, Charms, Gryffindor and Hufflepuff.**

“So when are you going to meet her?” Ron whispered as a Hufflepuff next to him tried to perform a mending charm.

“Oh, after this lesson. Down by the tree by the lake — you know, the one that grows broccoli.”

“You don’t need to like — prepare — for your date?”

Iris sniggered in disbelief. 

“Me? And _her_? Ron, that’s like — that’s like — the sun dating a walnut.” 

“Hey,” Ron said, offended, “you’re comparing my best friend to a walnut.”

“Anyway, I just want to ask her some questions about — I don’t know — stuff,” Iris scrunched up her face. “Lesbian things.”

* * *

**October 19, Second Floor Corridor, that Really Windy and Unpractical One.**

She thought of what Ron had said — did she really need to prepare? How does one prepare for a wizarding date, anyway? Should she meet up in dress robes? With a weird hat like Augusta Longbottom? And it’s not like it was a date at all. Just because they were gay didn’t mean they had to date, she grumbled. 

Stupid Ron. Iris was sure that finding other gay witches was not difficult at all. She could just floo random places all over the world and ask if they had any gay women.

And it’s not like she had anything to prepare with anyway, other than her dress robes for the yule ball, that time she went with Cedric — she spontaneously cringed at the memory of that fiasco.

She sighed.

She set out for the broccoli tree.

There was Daphne, sitting by the tree trunk. As she approached from the distance, Greengrass looked up from her book and smiled. 

Gosh, Iris was doomed.

* * *

**October 19, Black Lake, a bit off from the Broccoli Tree.**

“What made you realize it?” Daphne asked, after they had walked quite a bit around the lake.

“Well, I talked to Dumbledore —”

Daphne almost stopped walking. “Iris, you talked to _Dumbledore_ about your sexuality?” she asked, dumbfounded. 

“Er, well, yeah — and he told me I was gay.”

“You — the greatest wizard of all time told you that you were gay?”

“Well, he seemed pretty embarrassed about it. But yeah. And then, I talked to my godparents, and, well, they forced me through all these hypotheticals, and, well, here I am. And gay. Would you look at that."

“Indeed," Daphne smiled. "What made you date Longbottom, then, if you were just… in the closet?”

“Well, uh,” Iris frowned. “Everybody was talking about how attractive he was now, and I thought that must be somebody I should be attracted to, so I … decided to… be attracted to him. And, well, I wasn’t, because, you know, I just forced myself to.”

“That is not uncommon amongst closeted witches, you know.”

“It isn’t?” Iris said, heartened by the possibility that her obliviousness was not singularly concentrated in her brain, but spread out over a great sea of other oblivious lesbians. 

“It isn't. It’s also not rare to have such high standards that literally no wizard meets them – and, well, usually becoming uncomfortable or losing all interest if they ever indicate they might — reciprocate."

“Yeah, well, he kissed me —”

Daphne tensed imperceptibly.

“But I just kept thinking about carrots.”

Daphne burst into surprised laughter, putting her hand over her mouth.

“ _Carrots_?”

This all made Iris feel a lot less dumb.

“Yeah, carrots. And you’re not supposed to think about the systematic planning of wizarding agriculture when you’re kissing somebody.”

“Indeed, Potter?”

“Yeah, and I was really beat up about it too,” Iris said with wide eyes. “Because I couldn’t own up to the fact that I wasn’t actually attracted to Neville. I thought that I would be letting Neville down — it was like feeling Neville in my brain looking at all of my feelings, and if I didn’t feel perfectly great and lovely about him, then I was a bad person. And also, well, I mostly thought it meant that Voldemort had damaged me?”

“You thought — Voldemort — made you aromantic? Iris, you bigot.”

“Hey, I didn’t even know what that was until Dumbledore insulted his own brother.”

“You’re so open,” Daphne said after a bit. “None of my friends in Slytherin could just… tell me how they felt, like you just did.”

“What, because it would expose their secrets and lets you blackmail them?”

“What?” Daphne frowned. “No, they are just all emotionally avoidant and repressed.”

“Oh,” Iris said, “I thought Slytherin was all about favours and like, maintaining a unified front.”

“Slytherin is all about peer pressure to buy too expensive clothes, Iris. And... skincare.”

Daphne grimaced.

“Oh. I’ve never tried any.”

“You — what — Iris, you’ve never — skincare!?”

“No?” 

Daphne’s reality was breaking.

“Oh my god, Iris, you are so deprived it is sickening. Who made you like this? How can I fix it? No, wait, don’t answer,” Daphne sighed. “We will meet in Hogsmeade next week, I decree it.”

“How did you learn so many things about — about — lesbians?”

“Well, I’ve known I was into girls for years because —” 

Daphne stopped speaking.

“Yeah?”

Daphne coughed. “Well — I just — you know — knew.”

“Oh.”

“Yep,” Daphne said, desperately wishing for a change of topic.

“Are lesbians — are they bad?””

“What?” 

“I mean, is the wizarding world prejudiced against … gay girls?”

“Why would you be prejudiced against gay girls?” Daphne asked incredulously. 

“The muggles are.”

Daphne’s eyebrows shot up. “For what reason possibly?”

“I dunno. None, really.”

“Well, that makes perfect sense,” Daphne said to herself.

“I know right?”

“Why wizarding agriculture, anyway? It's so specific, Iris.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I think it was because I read about it in History of Magic that day,” Iris said, walking over a hill. “Did you know that muggles have like, millions and millions of people employed to do farming? They don’t have enchanted wheelbarrows and shovels and gnomes sorting lettuce like wizards do.”

“I thought they had roh-bots?” Daphne asked. “And like, cars?” 

“Yeah, well, they don’t have enough robots to run farms all over the world. Or cars. Which are mainly used for transport, not farming. You’re thinking of a tractor, which is like, a car with bigger wheels.”

“Does that not still make it a car?”

Iris smiled. “No, I don't think so."

“But it is ironic that you think about carrots,” Daphne mused, “given how carrot farms are known for being owned by the Potters.”

Iris stopped on top of the hill. “I _own_ things?”

“You _own —_ you — Iris, you don’t know you own things?”

She frowned. “No? I’ve been to my vault, I guess.”

Daphne’s eyes boggled. 

“You’ve seen the Potter vaults? What were they like?”

“Er,” she said. “Alright?”

_“Alright?”_

“Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of gold. Like, er, the size of that ant hill over there.” Iris pointed to a magical ant hill. “Hagrid took me to Gringotts and all that in my first year.”

“ _Gringotts_? The Potter vaults are under the Atlantic ocean, Iris, not London.”

“What?” 

“It takes five hundred and forty four goblins across two continents to maintain them alone. I think you saw your school vault?”

“I’m rich?”

“You are not just rich, Potter, you are disturbingly, sickeningly rich.” 

“Nobody told me this,” she scrunched up her face.

“Well, it’s highly impolite to talk about magical wealth.”

Iris honestly rather preferred not knowing. Dumbledore probably assumed it would give her too much to worry about. Which, frankly, it would have.

Iris’ brain caught up with what Daphne had just said.

“Wait, are you being impolite now then?”

“I know the rules of socialising, which means I can break them.”

"Oh, of course," Iris laughed.

They walked by a patch of singing nifflers. 

“You know that reminds me of Stubby Boardman.” 

“Stubby boardman, Iris?” Daphne grinned. “Is he secretly a niffler?”

Iris rolled her eyes. “What kind of music do you like, anyway?”

That's what you asked people you just met, right? To get to know them?

“Oh, muggle stuff mostly.” 

_“Muggle stuff?”_

“Yeah. I like Tupac.”

“You’re joking! Purebloods are supposed to hate muggle stuff, let alone Tupac!”

“I also like ABBA?”

Iris laughed in disbelief.

“Maybe we could get some records next week in Hogsmeade. You should meet my godfather, he has great muggle music taste.”

Iris paused suddenly on the topic of buying things.

“Wait, hang on, does everybody have vaults under the ocean?”

“No, just you Potter, I’m afraid.”

“Shouldn’t I be giving my galleons to starving children, or something?”

“Iris, magical agriculture. Eradication of starvation in 1042?”

“Oh,” Iris said. “I meant, uh, starving muggle children.”

“That is — you do know — have you — Iris, did nobody tell you anything at all? That’s Grindelwaldist.”

“Grindelwaldist?” 

“You are the protege of Albus Dumbledore and you do not know about Grindelwald.”

“I know about Grindelwald! Dumbledore killed him, right?”

“Iris, he _imprisoned_ him in his own fortress.”

Daphne sighed. “I’m sorry that the repeated attempts on your life by the Dark Lord prevented you from achieving a satisfactory magical education.” She paused. “Do you want me to tell you more? I don’t have to just tell you about gay wizarding girls, you know. I’m available for helping you to not commit social suicide, as well.”

Iris would in fact like to hear this, given she had grown into a (decidedly odd) friendship with Dumbledore, and now felt quite bad that she knew nothing about his past, really. At all, apparently. 

And she was too embarrassed to ask him this far in? It’s like forgetting somebody’s name that they introduced themselves to you with at a party, after you’ve talked with them for hours. 

“I would like that.”

“Well — alright — it’s seen as a tremendous faux pas to talk about interfering with muggle affairs or abolishing the statute — it’s almost as bad as muggleborn slurs. It was Grindelwald’s whole ideology — he wanted to rule muggles for their own good, completely reshape the global wizarding community in his image.”

“Oh. Was he a pureblood supremacist?”

“No, he was a wizarding supremacist — he didn’t believe in blood purity at all. In fact, he opposed it virulently. And most of his lieutenants were muggleborns — they were naturally more invested in trying to control the muggle world, either because they wanted to save it or for other personal reasons.”

Daphne scrunched up her face. (Her beautiful face, Iris’ brain unhelpfully supplied.)

“He was mostly opposed by a coalition of traditional purebloods and liberal wizards, like Dumbledore and the Ministry. But a lot of purebloods died in that war — they were his most fervent opposers, of course. All those deaths ended up causing the reactionary surge in pureblood mania and revanchism after he was defeated, the stuff that the Dark Lord capitalized on — all of this baseless propaganda about returns to a lost golden age of magical purity and exceptionalism.” 

“What happened when he was defeated?”

“Well, his entire regime disintegrated. The higher it is the faster it falls. Twice the pride, double the fall, my grand uncle Yan famously said at the time. Once he was gone, his followers dispersed expediently with no other central referent to mobilise around — his empire mostly ran on the legend of himself, and the power he exuded. Some of his followers fled to Asia and North America, some of them turned sides, some people started their own breakoff states — like the one in Ukraine, that one lasted quite a while. Some stayed loyal and tried to defend Nurmengard and such — Dumbledore had to lay siege on Nurmengard with an imprisoned Grindelwald in tow.”

“What, he besieged Nurmengard just to put Gellert in there?” 

“Yes. There were many attempts to break him out of prison, too, afterwards. Stupid ones, too — one Bulgarian wizard paid thousands of galleons for a hot air balloon to reach the top of Nurmengard. And in other cases people tried to go after Dumbledore himself. He had to fight off ten assassination attempts alone between 1945 and 1954 — and those are just the ones we know about publically.”

“I didn’t know people tried to assassinate Dumbledore,” Iris said. She wondered if that was why Dumbledore looked so disappointed when he saw Malfoy’s cursed opal necklace — too easy.

“Helping the muggles with magic doesn't sound too bad, though, surely?” Iris asked.

“But what if not all of them agree to you ruling them? Are you going to force billions of people? What about wizards who oppose you? Are you going to defeat them, too? And taking the statute of secrecy down in one single place impacts the entire global wizarding community. That’s why other countries weren’t really worried about Voldemort — in comparison to Grindelwald, he didn’t really seem impactful for the stability of the magical world."

"In the end, it all became too brutal — that’s when Dumbledore intervened. He believed ruling the muggles would be bad for both wizards and muggles — bad for the despot and the oppressed, both, that magicals were made for better things than oppression. That an oppressor believes himself to be perfect, and that this interferes with a wizard’s main task in life — becoming a better person.”

“Grindelwald was also very — supercilious — towards the mundane, and fixated on the superiority of the magical. Dumbledore on the other hand believed in the primacy and value of all life, of an inner revolution before an outer one. He thought we would harm the muggles by controlling them, that it wasn’t possible to do it without force, that the immense brutality wasn’t worth the greater good.”

* * *

**October 19, Gryffindor Dorms.**

“How was it?” Hermione asked

“Oh, it was great! She told me all these things about Dumbledore’s past and the Potter vaults — I really enjoyed it,” Iris smiled happily. “She’s really great — we’re going to meet in Hogsmeade next week.”

* * *

**October 19, Slytherin Dorms.**

“It went _awful_ , Trace, I talked to her about Grindelwald for like fifteen minutes straight!” 

“Ouch,” Tracey said.

“And then — Pansy, she has no idea about her family wealth!”

Pansy eyebrows reached up as far as they could go. 

“I ended up being the one to tell her!” Daphne groaned. “What happened to being a lesbian mentor?”

“Well, somebody has to tell Potter these things, right?” Tracey asked.

“Yes, but — Trace, being _really_ into History of Magic doesn't exactly scream sexy.”

“You’re overthinking things, Greengrass,” said Pansy. “Worry about your nose instead.”

Daphne put her hands over her nose. “What’s wrong with my nose?”

“Pansy, don’t tease Daphne, you know how she gets.”

Pansy rolled her eyes.

“Daph, what if she had started talking about abolishing the statute in the Daily Prophet? You did a good thing,” Tracey repeated.

“Everybody would ignore it,” Pansy said. “She’s the Girl-Who-Lived and Conquered and all that, she can say anything she wants.” 

“The-Girl-Who-Gets-Bored by Daphne Greengrass,” Daphne said moodily.

Pansy threw a pillow at her.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My favorite character, Daphne Exposition Greengrass. 
> 
> I always thought Harry being astronomically rich in Haphne fics was absurdly fun and silly but rather than subverting it, I decided to just — make Iris the richest person in the world. lmfao. there will of course be a scene where Daphne and Iris visit her vault.
> 
> Edit 10th October 2020:  
> I included the Grindelwald exposition spam from Daphne because, after I made Iris very rich, I had to give some kind of justification for why she wouldn’t try to save the world with all those galleons, which is what I'd imagine she'd do.
> 
> Thanks to [Tendra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tendrael/pseuds/Tendrael) and [AutumnSouls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutumnSouls/pseuds/AutumnSouls) for having a look at some of my drafts.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Daphne and Iris visit Hogsmeade and an innocent family is murdered

**October 26, Striganov’s Saturnity, That Well-known Hogsmeade Skincare Boutique.**

Daphne moved ahead as if she already knew where every single item in the shop was.

“You want this,” she said, handing her a blue bottle that moved with soothing, lulling waves inside. “It’s your cleanser.”

“Oh, and this.” She handed Iris a strangely looping vial that said Puffapod Exfoliator, Self-Applying. 

“And this...” A thick flask that said Neem Oil, Tea Tree Serum, Chicken Corpse Moisturizer, Self-Applying. 

“This too, of course,” she added, handing Iris a disk with a sun wearing sunglasses. It said SPF 50. “This is a good start.”

“That’s — four things!” said Iris. “Won’t this take forever?”

“Well, these are self-applying, you use your wand to put them on. They’re not as burdensome as something like — say, an Ashwinder egg mask, which requires fire-resistant gloves. Or lobalug venom, which requires you to ingest the antidote beforehand...”

“I stick my wand in this?” Iris grimaced, looking at the bottle. “What if my wand has like, frog entrail residue on the end?”

“No, of course not, you use the wand to spell it onto your skin. Like this.”

Daphne opened the bottle of Tea Tree serum and circled her wand around it. The serum lifted out of the bottle and evenly distributed itself on her forefinger. “Let me get you a good spellbook.”

Iris followed her down to the aisle where the books were. 

“Here, Iris —” Daphne handed her a book.

“Cosmic Cosmetic Charms for the Conniving Carlin, by Constance Chatelaine?” 

“This is the best one.”

Daphne went to grab a few products of her own, and Iris followed dutifully, peering around at the assortment of strange, colorful, sometimes bubbling items. 

Some vials had plants growing out of them, others sparkled beautifully like stars. They were often in strange shapes — the largest she saw was shaped like a long five-metre rope. Some of the aisles were filled with so much smoke you couldn’t see the products, others had bottles which vibrated in incessant instability. She swore that some of the vials they passed had blinking eyes inside them.

At one point, Daphne accidentally turned a vial to ice, and embarrassingly turned it back again. Iris didn’t really see why that was so embarrassing for Daphne, but, alas. 

“Is my skin really that bad?” Iris asked with worry, looking at her four items, which seemed to indeed be many to her.

“Why wouldn’t you want to make something better?” Daphne said, browsing the product aisle for something.

“So it _is_ bad?”

“I didn’t say that,” Daphne paused, looking at her from the corners of her eyes. “You — you have very nice skin.”

“You think so?” Iris asked earnestly.

Daphne hiccuped as if something was stuck in her throat. 

“Are you alright?” 

“I’m fine,” she blushed. “You don’t — have anything to worry about. I just don’t — I think it would be a shame if you got wrinkles, Iris.”

“I’m eighteen.” 

“Indeed, which is why I’m buying you these now.”

Iris realized she was probably being quite rude by not accepting Daphne’s gifts. She just wasn’t sure she cared about her skin that much. 

She followed her up to the counter.

“Hello Greengrass and friends,” the Vampire behind the desk whispered. 

Wow, that man has perfect skin, Iris thought.

Then he looked at Iris’ forehead and gasped dramatically.

Iris sighed mentally.

“Oh my god, it’s the Girl-who-Lived!” he whispered. “What an esteemable honor, everything is on the coffin! Let me see what you are acquisitioning this fine day.”

Iris showed him her four items.

“A bit basic, isn’t it?” he said with worry. “Are you sure you don’t want the hinkypunk —”

“She’s just starting out, Striganov. It’s a beginner routine.” 

Striganov gasped.

“Oh I see!” he whispered. “Well — if you ever need anything, feel free to come by, and I will give you anything you need. Even the uncommon Salicylic Acid, if you so desire...”

Daphne passed him her products too.

“Greengrass, do you wish for it to be billed to Mrs. Greengrass?” he whispered

“Sure,” Daphne sighed. “Thanks, Striganov.”

“Anything for my customers,” he whispered, handing them a fine black bag.

The door chime dinged as they went out.

“Why did he ask if you wanted it billed to yourself?” 

“ _Myself_? Oh, no, Iris, he meant my mother. People almost only ever call her Mrs. Greengrass.”

“Does she shop here often?”

“I don’t know,” Daphne sighed. “I know Striganov buys clothing from her, though.”

“Your mother sells clothing?”

“Yeah... _Haute couture wizarding fashion,_ ” Daphne said with scorn. “Her actual name is Cruella — Cruella Crocus De Sativus Vil Greengrass. She’s… special. Very self-absorbed. I will admit she makes good clothing, though.”

Iris didn’t think Daphne sounded very happy about her own mother. 

She absently wondered if Mrs. Greengrass had inspired Cruella De Vil. Maybe she should show Daphne Greengrass some Disney movies.

“What about the rest of your family?” Iris asked.

“Oh. Well, My father is _Lygos_. Lygos Agnes de Vitex Agnus Castus Greengrass.”

“Do people ever call him Lygge?” 

“Upon certain death, I suppose,” Daphne said. “Usually he’s just Mr. Greengrass, like my mother. Mr. Greengrass that, this...”

Daphne adjusted her Slytherin scarf with her black gloves. 

“My grand uncle, Yan Greengrass — I can’t be bothered to list all his middle names. Very respectable — he’s the politician. Nice forked silver beard. He turns two hundred and twenty seven this autumn and is infamous for being perfectly neutral on the Wizengamot and steadfastly having absolutely no strong opinions _at all_.”

“Isn’t absolutely not having any strong opinions a strong opinion in itself?” Iris asked.

Daphne grinned. 

They passed through a throng of 3rd years, who didn’t know whether to stare at Daphne or Iris.

“Then there’s my other grand uncle, who is trying to make a … moon broom.”

Iris’ eyes boggled.

“He is not particularly successful Iris, don’t twist yourself just yet. My father is really the most industrious. He owns a series of wizarding cafes, and he sells these things called vapes — they’re like tobacco products but that work on magical vapor. He also has champagne yards in, well, Champagne, and I think he owns a horse race in Avignon. Also he loves those shirts with leather pads on the elbows — a personality trait, if you ask me.”

Daphne paused as they passed by Ginny and Luna, who Iris waved to kindly.

“I have a sister that I love very much,” Daphne continued. “Astoria, or Stori. She’s at Beauxbatons.” 

“Why didn’t she go to Hogwarts?”

“Voldemort,” Daphne said, smiling grimly. “They didn’t think it was safe, and well, Astoria is a bit more sensitive to political developments than me. And it wouldn’t be right to move her back to Hogwarts now, with all her friends on the continent. But I try to send an owl every week.”

“Does she respond?”

“Of course,” Daphne tsked. “Imagine getting an owl from me and not responding.” 

* * *

**October 26, The Three Broomsticks, That Quite Good Table by the Window.**

They sat down at the table in The Three Broomsticks. 

As it was a busy day, menus instead of Rosmerta were flying from table to table taking orders — two menus diverted from the flock and flew over to land on their table.

“Do you want anything in particular?” Daphne asked, removing her scarf and fine black gloves.

Iris looked over her options and frowned. “I mean, I haven’t tried half of these.” 

“Pick one you haven’t, then.” 

“Err… the lyrical oyster?”

Daphne looked up from her menu. “That’s the thing one hundred and fifteen year old witches tend to get.”

“Oh.”

Daphne grinned. “Your face.”

Iris stuck her tongue “Yeah, well I’ll get it anyway!”

“It’s your meal,” Daphne shrugged, although the corners of her mouth showed a smile.

“What are you getting?” 

“Crab in avocado halves, I think, to go with the seafood theme. We should get some Ogden’s Ale, too, it goes well with oyster.”

Daphne took the attached quill, crossed the items off the menus, and told them to fly back to the kitchen. 

“You know —” Daphne started, but then paused, for a parchment bird had landed right in front of her.

“Huh.”

Iris watched her open it, a flicker of strange emotions running across Daphne’s face.

Daphne sighed and then passed it to Iris.

Iris was laughing. “What?!” 

“I think she’s joking."

“Is she a friend of yours?” 

“Oh, yeah, that’s Tracey, my best friend in Slytherin.”

“Slytherins have friends?”

“Iris.”

Iris grinned “No, no, I was just joking — ow!” 

Daphne had bumped her leg into hers under the table.

Iris looked back in mock offense.

“That’ll teach you to be prejudiced,” Daphne said, looking out the window.

“I’m not prejudiced!” 

Daphne looked at her, blushed, then looked out the window again.

Iris waved the parchment bird. “What’s this best friend like, then?”

“Awfully genuine, and probably the least Slytherin person in Slytherin I know, all years included. She isn’t particularly dramatic, which” — Daphne frowned — “I’m pretty certain the Sorting Hat puts students in Slytherin based on their dramatic potential.”

Iris thought of Draco Malfoy, Daphne Greengrass, Tom Riddle, Severus Snape, Salazar Slytherin himself putting a basilisk into his own stone head….

Especially that bit in the graveyard with Tom Riddle. Or the Chamber. Those moments with Voldemort were probably some of the most awkward conversations she’s ever had in her life. “Ah, woe is me, Potter, for I was born in an orphanage, left wretched and destitute...”

Wasn’t he like seventy at this point? Why is he still monologuing about his childhood? And what was she supposed to say to that?

I’m very sorry? Maybe get therapy?

Iris thought of her newfound riches and how she could probably have footed Voldemort’s humongous therapy bill.

“Iris?” Daphne said, interrupting her reverie.

Her executive function kicked back in. “Sorry, I was just thinking about all the dramatic Slytherins I know.”

“I’m charmed to know you think about me.”

“How could you be sure I was thinking of you?”

“Because I know you don’t know that many Slytherins, and —” Daphne’s smile faltered. “Wait, you were thinking of the Dark Lord, were you not?”

Iris waved her off. “Don’t worry about it. I mean, the Voldemort in my head is usually just a laughing stock.”

Daphne put her head in her hands. 

“Iris. I’m going to need a subscription for mood stabilizing potions if all of our conversations continue to be this much of a Wronski feint. A laughing stock? The Dark Lord?” 

“Yes, I was just thinking about the Chamber of Secrets in second year and how —”

“You were in the Chamber of Secrets in second year!? As a twelve-year old witch?”

“Yeah, well, er, I —”

Daphne held up an elegant hand. “Iris, we will speak of this on a day where we both get very drunk. But I can see Rosmerta walking towards us, and if you start speaking of defeating Slytherin’s monster with a trombone as a twelve-year old, I will lose my already diminished appetite.”

“Is getting really drunk part of teaching me about gay girls?”

“Yes, it is.” 

Iris thought for a bit. “I know a secret passage to the Shrieking Shack — we can just smuggle in firewhiskey there.”

Daphne cringed. “I can’t do firewhiskey, Iris, maybe some of my father’s vintage.”

But before Iris could ask why, Rosmerta came up to their table bearing drinks and food. 

“Iris, dear,” she beamed. “And Daphne Greengrass! How nice to see some cross-house mingling. Well! Here’s your meals. I was most surprised by your pick Iris! A lyrical oyster as a young woman!” 

Rosmerta placed a plate with a metal cloche over it in front of Iris, an open plate with the crab in avocado halves in front of Daphne, and Ogden’s Ale for them both.

“Thank you, madam Rosmerta,” Daphne said politely, and Iris smiled with warmth. 

“Oh, you two! You make me wish I was your age again. Alas,” she fussed. “And Iris, _please_ tell Dumbledore that even the Supreme Mugwump needs to pay his tab.” 

“I will?”

“Good!” Rosmerta said and scooted back to the kitchen.

Iris suspected perhaps Aberforth was the one who was not paying, yet was putting the tab in the last name he shared with his infinitely more well-known brother, just to annoy him.

Daphne picked up her utensils with the practiced mannerisms of a posh kid with strict parents.

And Iris took off the metal cover over her own food. 

Underneath was a beautiful circular arrangement of oysters, complete with macerated lemons and mignonette sauce. In the center of the circle was a large oyster, with three smaller oysters next to it. All the oysters had edible glitter sprinkled over them so they sparkled and reflected off the plate like a marine kaleidoscope.

“Wow,” Iris said, all questions about firewhiskey allergies forgotten.

As if responding to her attention, the central oyster opened — closed — opened — and then, it started singing Cuban Blues, as three oysters around it opened and closed and provided a heavy bass. 

Iris looked on in confusion.

The rest of the oysters joined in, going _“Ooooooooo”_ as the central oyster continued to sing in Spanish. The macerated lemons stringed themselves as instruments.

“What?” Iris asked.

Daphne was laughing. 

“How do I eat this?” Iris said.

“You Diffinido the oyster.”

“I can’t kill this!” 

“ _OOOOOO,”_ they went.

“Is it alive?” 

“Is it?” Daphne asked.

“I signed up for lunch, not philosophy! You tricked me! You _lied_ to me!”

Daphne held up her hands. “I did no such thing.” 

“Lies by omission! You could have told me I would have to kill a whole oyster family.”

“Iris, they’re just animated!”

“To sing Spanish!?”

“It’s a coincidence what language they sing, actually — I’ve seen ones in French, German, Chinese, Swedish, Sumerian... “

“They’re killing oyster families from all over the world?!” 

“ _Por tu amor, soy capaaaaaaaz!_ _”_ sung the oysters. _“_ _De enfrentrarme a cuuaaalquuieeraa!”_

Daphne stared into her glass, smiling in disbelief. “Iris, you eat the meat in the Great Hall, how is this any different?”

“Yes, but the meat doesn’t start _speaking_ to me! Let alone singing. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t be unnerved if the meat pie started conversing with you!?”

“I would simply eat it, as I recognize philosophically that it is not alive.” 

“But—”

“And even if it was alive,” she continued, “I, by virtue of eating meat and using animal ingredients in my potioneering, am already committing the crime.” 

“Can we switch our food?” Iris asked abruptly, blushing. “Please?”

Daphne rolled her eyes, pulling out her wand to float the plates back and forth. “Here.”

“Thanks,” Iris said, and then watched as Daphne proceeded to calmly murder the oyster family. 

She gulped, almost getting her own food stuck in her throat.

Iris struggled for a change of topic, settling on the cliche one that every student asks every other student.

“What’s your favorite subject, then?” Iris asked.

Daphne frowned, diffinido’ing another oyster. “Er, most of them?”

“Even History of Magic?”

“Especially History of Magic.” 

“Really? Huh. I need to learn to mimic that thing you do where you gasp delicately whenever I say something that shocks you.”

“I do not gasp!” 

Iris put her hand on her chest and mimicked Daphne's accent. “Iris, you don’t know about skincare, I will faint. How can you be so deprived? A travesty.”

“I do not speak like that!” Daphne blushed, as she killed another oyster. 

“Sure you don’t,” Iris said, taking another bite of her avocado.

Daphne seemed to fluster even more. “Even if I _do_ , it is only because your life story is completely and utterly absurd.”

How could Daphne Greengrass both be so confident and so easily flustered? 

Iris quite privately thought no blush had the right to be as immoderately charming as Greengrass’. Groan.

* * *

**October 26, The Slytherin Boys’ Club.**

The eight year Slytherin males were all sitting in the famed Slytherin Boys’ club. 

(That is to say, an out of the way corner of the Common Room.)

“I found her eating on the floor in the Great Hall!” Draco hissed. “Who does that?” 

“I do believe, Draco,” Blaise said, “that Greengrass has been so used to her family status getting her a pass through life that, at this point, she just wants to see what she can get away with. Who’s actually going to try to stop her?”

“Common opinion!?”

“And she’s too used to her being really hot getting her a pass, too,” Greg said.

“Being horny is not allowed in the Boys’ club,” Blaise said, casually pointing his wand at Greg.

“Sorry, sorry.”

“It is literally rule number two, Greg,” Blaise sighed.

“He can’t read,” Draco said.

“Yes I can! How do you think I got through seven years of schooling without being able to read?”

“Through sisyphean effort, I’m sure,” Blaise said. “Anyhow, Draco, you were saying?”

“Well, why — it’s the — isn’t she — what would people think!? Doesn’t she care?” Draco said with a healthy dose of his neurotic tenor.

“Do you really think Greengrass cares what the younger years think of her? And wackier things do go on in this school. Besides, we should be happy for Greengrass. She’s finally in some form of interaction with her unrequited love.”

“Unrequited love is only interesting as long as the love is unrequited,” Nott said looking up from his book.

“Yes yes, Theo,” Draco waved him off. “Blaise, do you know how she did it? Befriended Iris Potter? Vince saw them walking around Hogsmeade together already! Alone, without Granger and Weasley. Which has never happened before!”

“Well, according to Pansy, Greengrass just… walked up to her… held out her hand ... and asked her if she wanted to be her friend,” Blaise said nonplussed.

“That’s what I did at eleven! And that did not work!”

“You did what?” Blaise grinned, suddenly interested. 

* * *

**October 26, Gryffindor Common Room**

“Woah, what’s this loot?” Ron asked as Iris walked in with her bags from Hogsmeade.

“Skincare.” 

Ron looked horrified. “Iris, what is Daphne Greengrass doing to you?”

Hermione butted in. “Ron, it is perfectly acceptable to care about your skin, Iris is doing nothing wrong. In fact, I laud her for exploring more of the magical world.” She looked over Iris’ bags. “Can I see them, Iris?”

“Sure,” she shrugged, and handed her vampiric bags over to Hermione. “Don’t worry, Ron, I won’t start spending hundreds of galleons a week on skincare like some other people in this clown school.”

Ron seemed to relax at this. 

“Or clothing.”

Ron relaxed even more. 

* * *

**October 26, Gryffindor Girls’ Dorm.**

The Eight year Gryffindor Girls’ Dorm were divided in two — one part decorated by Hermione and Iris, the other by Lavender and Parvati.

The Hermione and Iris part was then further divided into an ‘Iris’ part and a ‘Hermione’ part, where the Iris part’s general aesthetic mood could be summed up as ‘Quite Messy’.

Whereas Hermione had several neatly stacked small bookshelves, Iris had obscure and eccentric books stabled on top of each other on the floor — most of them being homework from Dumbledore. One of the books was in a fishbowl, as it would always seek water, and she did not want it to jump into the toilet again.

Hermione’s end had a few well-cared for memorabilia, while Iris’ was filled with bizarre souvenirs from her travels and training with Dumbledore. 

This included a dragonbone trumpet from Persia.

Iris’ wardrobe, too, contained normal school uniforms, and then truly outrageously bizarre gifts. The Magical Elector-Queen of Bohemia had given her a rainbow acromantula silk dress robe which had seemed to make even Dumbledore jealous, and an ancient wizard from the British Department of Mysteries occupied with Time Magics and Divination had given her an odd-looking pair of shoes which he called “Yeezys Red October.”

Iris herself was sitting on the foot of her unmade bed.

“So, want to try it?” she asked Hermione, looking up from her copy of Cosmic Cosmetic Charms for the Conniving Carlin. 

“ _Libere mato_ ,” Iris intoned into the cleanser. 

The cleanser distributed itself onto Iris’ face, guided by her magic. It foamed up beautifully … and excessively. 

Iris was left sitting there with foam covering all of her features. She almost could not see. “What do I do now?”

Hermione read the back of the label for the bottle. “Thaumaturgically licensed through Fleamont potions, et cetera et cetera — aha! Look at the lid, Iris, you’re supposed to Aguamenti into it.” 

Hermione handed her the lid, which was shaped like soothing, floating waves, softly changing form with each wave. Holding it felt like holding the top of the sea.

“Alright,” Iris said. “ _Aguamenti_ ,” and the lid filled with water.

“I assume the lid is enchanted with the same spell that the bottle is,” Hermione said.

“ _Libere mato_ ,” Iris said, and the foam was cleaned elegantly off Iris’ face.

“Wow, fancy stuff.”

Hermione was reading the labels of the other items. 

“ _Chicken Corpse Moisturizer!?_ ” 

Iris laughed. 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [ AutumnSouls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutumnSouls/pseuds/AutumnSouls) for betaing, and for putting up with my shit.
> 
> If you're curious about what the oysters are singing: [Los Zafiros - He Venido.](https://youtu.be/4ZErRjmKY_w?t=50)
> 
>   
> Thanks to /u/violently_angry on the haphne sub for allowing me to steal their Point A for Blaise's dialogue:  
> "Greengrass has been so used to her family status getting her a pass through life that, at this point, she just wants to see what she can get away with. Who’s actually going to try to stop her?"
> 
>   
> 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iris has a lesson with Dumbledore and puts down a communist uprising

**October 29, The Corridor to the Headmaster’s Office.**

“Hinkypunk gummies.” 

She arrived at Dumbledore’s office ready for her weekend lesson.

“Ah, Iris,” Dumbledore said, looking up from his sofa-sized aquarium — his recent experiment in trying to create a fish-human language bridge. 

Attempts at which were actually very illegal and most decidedly banned by the ministry.

Dumbledore twirled his wand, and the goldfish motionlessly staring up at him broke from their trance, scattering all over the aquarium.

“Do you have your invisibility cloak with you?”

“Yep.”

“Excellent. We will be journeying to the Valley of Kings in Egypt to visit magical Thebes — they wish for me to reorient the microcosmic essence for the city, to twist it towards a different celestial object.” His moustache quivered. “I daresay this will be an excellent opportunity to teach you about the eight limb of Alchemy, Iris.” 

Wow cool, Iris thought, even though so far she had only learned the first, second, and third and a half limb from the professor.

“Unfortunately you cannot portkey into the city, since about — a millennium ago. In the absence of time travel, we will take this portkey —” he held up a bounty bar ”— to muggle Thebes and enter the traditional way.”

“They won’t even let the Supreme Mugwump portkey directly into the city?”

“It’s a matter of Principle and Tradition to them.”

“So we’ll fly?”

“Alas, no.” 

* * *

**October 29, The Deserts Northwest of Muggle Thebes**

Iris and Dumbledore were riding through the desert on their camels. 

Entering by camel was part of a complex magical ritual that unplotted the city to the camel-rider. Since its implementation more than a thousand years ago, there had been invented and innovated many easier, more flexible ways of unplotting a desert city. 

However, this was not Tradition, and changing it would certainly be very Unprincipled, which went against everything the Elder Council stood for. 

(Which was mostly just those two things.)

They rode over a hill, camels wheezing. 

“I’ve befriended a Slytherin,” Iris said, continuing to talk about what she had been up to.

“Oho,” Dumbledore said.

“Our friendship was originally supposed to be about us connecting over being queer, and helping me figure things out, but, really, we just spend time talking about random shit.”

Iris frowned.

“Kind of like your teaching, Professor.”

“My teaching is organic and rhizomatic, Iris, and reveals itself in due time.”

“Are you saying that one day while I’m fighting a Dark Wizard I will succeed implicitly because of your anecdote about colored buttons?”

“I am saying that when you are studying Merwyn the Malicious’ exclusive law of transmogrification, and you are left adrift without the ability to infer significance in something devoid of detail, the anecdote about colored buttons will reveal to you the third Law,” Dumbledore smiled, moustache quivering.

“Is that not a very deterministic worldview? Do you really believe that all of your anecdotes will somehow help me?”

“Why else would I tell them?”

Iris narrowed her eyes in suspicion. 

Dumbledore reached down to adjust his camel. 

“She told me about my vault, too. How come I never figured that out?”

“I daresay you’ve had other things to focus on.”

“I hope you at least stole money from my vault to fund the Order.”

“Alas, I did not, Iris, that all came from my own funds.”

“Damn.”

They trudged over another hill. 

“Still, it’s a bit weird to think that I am … the richest witch in the world.”

“Hmm?”

“I don’t know how to feel about it — feels like I’m not doing enough.”

“That is a feeling that is one of my most frequent acquaintances.” 

She thought about what Daphne had told her about Grindelwald. Was it really that wrong to help muggles? 

She looked up at Dumbledore. 

Should she talk about Grindelwald? She did not know his history with him. And maybe he had the same relationship with him that she did with Voldemort… that is to say, constantly being inundated with questions about him until she wanted to sew the invisibility cloak into the hood of her robes. 

Then again, she did not have any problems talking about Voldemort with Professor Dumbledore...

“She told me about Grindelwald,” she said, carefully looking at his reaction.

If she had not known him so well, she would have missed the almost imperceptible grimace.

“I asked her why I couldn’t use my money to help the muggle world.”

Dumbledore smiled sadly. “Yes, as to be expected of somebody with a heart and soul like yours, Iris.”

“Professor — I still don’t understand why it’s wrong?”

“It isn’t, in itself,” he sighed. “I do agree, you know. I would do the same as you, if only I could avoid all political and magical factors.”

“Oh?”

“Unfortunately, the reality is that too many wizards oppose magical intervention, and too many muggles would, and have, as well. Those wizards oppose it to such a degree where extremely violent methods are the only possible recourse. And extremely domineering methods and despotic magical systems the only solution.”

Iris’ camel sneezed. 

“And there’s the magical factors to consider — there are innumerable blocks to using magic on such a large scale, especially in relation to mundanes. Graham’s laws and invertible matrices, to name just two examples.”

“But isn’t there a way you can help the muggles in secret?” 

“The consequences would be very dire if it was found out by the international community, Iris, especially after … Grindelwald. And there are strong magical forces implemented globally to prevent and detect those attempts. Spindling webs of aether, refracting crystals of enchant spread out over the entire globe… It is **the** most maintained wizarding institution. Wizards are not naive, Iris, they know that the impulse to help is a common one.”

Iris sighed sadly.

“You are, however, free to improve the mundane world by mundane means,” Dumbledore smiled. “Hence why several mundane philosophers are secretly wizards. In fact, a student of Hogwarts called Nick is currently teaching philosophy at the University of Warwick.”

“Do you write mundane philosophy?”

“Sadly, no. Too much of my thinking is interweaved and enmeshed with the answers magic provides us. Retroactively unweaving the thread of magic from being entwined with my thought would take substantially more pensieve space than I possess.”

Iris thought to herself.

“Did you at least steal money from my vault to help pay for Hogwarts, then?”

“I did not,” Dumbledore smiled. 

“Dammit. I should create some kind of charity for the magical world though, surely.”

“Hmm. I think we will draw up some plans once we are back at Hogwarts.”

“Great,” Iris smiled.

Dumbledore adjusted his holographic-textured sunglasses.

Iris looked existentially out over the horizons.

“Oh. Professor, is your brother filling the tab at the Three Broomsticks and not paying it?”

Dumbledore blushed. “No, I’m afraid that’s me, Iris.”

* * *

**16th November, The Broccoli Tree, Again.**

This was her sixteenth outing with Daphne Greengrass. 

They were sitting under the broccoli tree where they had first met, studying transfiguration; Daphne leaned up against the tree, while Iris laid on her stomach, flipping her spellbook.

Daphne had charmed the area around them so the occasional broccoli dropping from the tree would not hit them on the head. Or, fall on the ground around them, where Iris would probably manage to eventually roll over them and smash broccoli all over her robes. 

Greengrasses had standards, after all.

They were trying to turn magical chess pawns into queens for seventh-year transfiguration — a thing that initially seemed like a simple effort, but turned out to be a monumental task. It required transmuting the essence of the-thing-in-itself, changing slave to master, transmuting along with it the many-layered and folded enchantments laid on the chess piece itself. This required tremendous focus and concentration on the behalf of the caster, who had to keep several things moving in their mind at once. 

“I think I’m ready to try again — can you lend me a pawn?” Daphne asked.

Iris opened a silenced wooden box filled with pawns, who angrily clamored at her. 

Iris snapped her fingers until small drops of fire rained over them. “Behave,” she grumbled. 

“Down with hierarchy!” the pawns yelled. “Fully automated luxury pawn anarchocommuni—!”

She slammed the box closed, handing a protesting pawn to Daphne.

Daphne put down her book. 

“ _Sint occaecat cupidatat Rex,_ ” she intoned, pointing her white wand at the pawn, brows furrowed. 

The pawn slowly morphed — and became a Queen. 

“Oh my god, I’ve been ennobled,” the Pawn-now-Queen said. “Up with the monarchy! Let them eat cake!” 

“Amazing,” Iris said, and Daphne smiled with satisfaction. 

Iris really did enjoy studying with Daphne — it had a peacefulness and charm that she didn’t know while studying with Hermione and Ron. It was kind of like studying with Remus, except Daphne was actually on Iris’ own level and not some kind of magical Indiana Jones who had travelled the world between 1981 and 1993.

“You try,” Daphne said. 

Iris opened the box, spelled some more fire over the proletariat, and took out a pawn.

She hoped this time she did not stumble and turn it into a Queen Prawn instead.

She examined the enchantments on the chess piece. She mentally peeled them off into separate layers, like she would a multicolored onion that existed in several dimensions, keeping all in her mind, working to unweave and unattract them from each other. She brought up in her mind the symbolism and emotion of change, of exaltation and apotheosis, pouring her will and authority into the spell.

“ _Sint occaecat cupidatat Rex,”_ she both intoned and formed in her mind. 

This spell in particular taught students finesse — it was not so much a matter of will and authority, but a matter of being able to balance on a rope while holding several baskets with eggs in both of your hands. Except in this case, the eggs were the act of trying to maintain the fragile enchantments put on the chess piece by the maker, and the progress along the rope was transmuting the thing-in-itself, its essence. 

And as if it was nothing, as if it was meant to do this naturally, to have been this all along, the pawn changed into a Queen.

“Iris,” Daphne smiled. “You did it.”

Iris filled with the enjoyable warmth of accomplishment. 

Daphne started packing her things. “We should head out to the forest and get those herbs you wanted.”

Iris thought she should probably introduce Daphne to Hermione and Ron soon. 

Or did she want it to be her own little thing, just for a bit? 

She could maybe admit to herself that yes, she did. 

Studying with Daphne had another element for Iris — the fact that Daphne was so relentlessly _pretty_. Watching her do stuff, her elegant wand movements, her smiles of satisfaction, had such charm in itself — it was like watching one of those movies with absurdly pretty female protagonists that Iris used to be obsessed with, when she could steal away in the night to watch them at the Dursleys. 

Iris packed her spellbooks with Daphne, thinking to herself.

She did believe it was kind of ironic that she had never questioned why she was so obsessed with the women in film. At the time in fourth year, she just thought girls were just supposed to be that way. Desirable and ultimately unattainable for Iris.

Sometimes she harbored the secret thought that if she could ever enter a relationship with Daphne … she liked girls too, after all, could she like Iris? — but she quickly squashed it. She did not want to entertain those thoughts and end up living forever in unrequited love, even if she maybe did have a bit of a budding crush on her mysteriously charming Slytherin friend. 

But that was fine. 

Even if Daphne’s cheekbones did funny things to her heart. 

What she did know is that she wanted — uncharacteristically selfishly of her — to keep these outings with Daphne to herself for now, her own secret thing just between her and Daphne.

They stood up, Daphne dispelled her anti-broccoli field over where they sat, and they set towards the forest.

The day was beautiful, the sun shined down upon them 

Iris was happy. 

“You know, in my second year I met the acromantula colony in the forest.”

“There’s an _acromantula_ colony? How big? Don’t say thirty specimens, Iris —”

“Er, well, there’s actually — probably several hundreds.”

“You will pay for my mood stabilizing potion subscription," Daphne declared. "Iris, ever heard of acromantula silk?” 

“Yeah, a bit. I have some in my closet but I don’t really wear it.”

“When — when did you buy an acromantula silk garment?” Daphne smiled in confusion, for this did not fit up with Iris’ character at all.

“Oh, it was a gift from the Magical Elector-Queen of Bohemia.”

“Of course,” Daphne sighed. “Anyway, I assume you know that it is the rarest textile on earth?”

“Er, I do now?”

“It is coveted by _all_ the six major fashion houses, especially my mother’s. Nothing comes close to acromantula silk. Each thread is worth a galleon. Do not tell my mother about this colony, ever, Potter, or sycophantic bureaucrats will invade our school.”

Iris had no idea Hagrid had a backyard filled with Gucci all this time. 

“Why is so much of the stuff you tell me about money?”

Daphne frowned. “Is it?”

“Sometimes, yeah.”

Daphne went silent for a bit. “I suppose it’s because my parents’ idea of childhood rearing was to teach me as much as possible about social strata and pureblood politics.”

Iris thought to how Sirius could mysteriously identify the exact century when goblin silver was made, then thought of Walburga Black, and cringed.

“I don’t really … know how to get out of that frame of thinking,” Daphne said. 

“What, like, detoxify yourself from being a posh kid?”

“Something like that,” she smiled. “But you’re helping, I think.”

“No problem,” Iris mumbled, blushing.

* * *

**16th November, Just Outside the Forbidden Forest**

They were coming up from the forest, Iris’ herb pouch sitting snug against the belt of her robes. 

Iris saw what she thought was a thestral in the distance, spindly walking down from the castle — 

No wait, it was Severus Snape. Who nobody had seen or heard of for months.

After the battle, Snape had flown off to another continent. As in, he had literally taken flight and flown away.

Iris always forgot he could do that. 

When she first saw Snape fly, she was _**Horrified.**_

It was akin to the feeling when you are looking at a cockroach and it suddenly takes flight. And you run away.

Snape shouldn't have the powers of flight. It was just not right. 

Although Iris figured he probably just used it to float around vaguely in his potions laboratory. Or float up the Grand Staircase.

Man, Snape must have loved finally being able to fly though. It fit his campy personality. 

_"I am finally... Me,"_ she imagined Snape saying after Voldemort had finished teaching him.

She wondered if Voldemort ever taunted Lucius Malfoy by flying up the stairs in Malfoy Manor at a slightly faster speed, so that Lucius would have to lunge up the steps to keep up.

That seemed like the kind of dick move he would do.

Like those puns he used on Wormtail.

_"Wormtail. I will allow you to perform an essential task for me, one that many of my followers would **give their right hands to perform."**_

_"I knew that to achieve this — it is an old piece of Dark Magic, the potion that revived me tonight — I would need three powerful ingredients. Well, one of them was **already at hand,** was it not, Wormtail? Flesh given by a servant."_

_"Ah, Wormtail, you don't want me to spoil the surprise? **Your part** will come at the very end. . . but I promise you, you will have the honor of being just as useful as Bertha Jorkins. "_

"Iris, is that Snape?"

Iris came back to the real world.

“I think so?” 

They reached the campy goth potions master. 

“I thought you went to Chile, professor?” Daphne asked.

“I did,” he said. 

“And you came back?” Iris asked

“No,” said Snape and walked off.

“Wait, was that it?” Iris said in wonderment.

She watched him prowl away.

"What a weirdo."

"He was probably up at the castle to talk to the headmaster," Daphne said.

"Yeah — but — he could at least say hello, no?" 

"You really want to talk to Snape about the battle?" 

"On second thought, thank god. That would have been awkward."

* * *

**17th November, Slytherin Girls’ Dorms.**

Tracey was laying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. 

“Isn’t it — strange? I could never have imagined that this could have happened a month ago,” she told Pansy, who was powdering her face, staring into the small circular mirror.

“Like, now she’s hanging out with the girl-who-lived every other day. After all those years of her moping about it? It’s surreal. I can’t remember how many times we were in the Great Hall and she was moodily stealing glances and pining away at the Gryffindor table... And I’ve rarely seen her in such a continuously good mood before — usually it’s so — up and down...” 

“Yes, it’s most grating,” Pansy frowned. “She’s disturbing the Slytherin ecosystem of misery. When are we upstanding house members supposed to have space to enjoy a good sulk when she’s being so smug all the time?”

Tracey thought that was a ridiculous statement coming from Pansy, given that she had been continuously smug for their entire schooling.

“Do you think Daphne will still have time for us?” Tracey asked.

“Ah, angst,” Pansy smiled. “No, Iris Potter will monopolize all her time and we will never see Daphne again.”

“I’m just trying to be emotionally open.”

“Emotionally open? I do not know that word. Now, emotionally closed off... Anyway, cheer up, Tracey. I wouldn’t worry,” Pansy said, closing her compact powder. “Greengrass likes you a lot. It’s disgustingly evident to everybody here.”

“It’s not that! I’m happy for her, I really am. I just … need some time to adjust.”

“Are you saying you need my emotional support?” 

“No, no —”

But Pansy had already sprung up from her bed and grabbed Tracey by the arm.

“Get up loser, we’re going shopping,” Pansy said, dragging her out of the room.

“Is shopping your idea of emotional support?” Tracey protested.

“Yes,” Pansy said. “I’m buying you all your favorite things. Blaise!”

“What?” he said across the common room

“Emotional support shopping for Tracey!” 

Blaise sighed and went to join Pansy.

“Why can’t you just get her a therapy hinkypunk or something?” he asked.

“Are you daft?” Pansy asked.

“I’d love a therapy hinkypunk,” Tracey said. 

“You are both daft,” Pansy sighed. 

* * *

**17th November, Somewhere in the air above Hogwarts.**

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH,” Daphne screamed.

She was sitting on the back of Iris’ illegal firebolt —

“AAAAAAAH!”

“Okay, okay,” Iris laughed. “I’ll slow down.”

“Brooms are not supposed to go this fast!” Daphne yelled as they decelerated. 

“Well, yeah, I modified it.” 

“Iris, that’s _illegal_ for a reason! Merlin’s balls!”

“My godfather helped me ensure it was safe.”

“That’s even worse! Your adoptive parent supports this?”

“It’s safe as long as I’m the one steering,” Iris grinned. “So don’t you ever think of swapping.”

“Trust me, I was thinking no such thing.”

Iris looked down at her Quidditch uniform.

Daphne had frozen her arms and hands solid onto the black leather on Iris’ stomach. Iris hadn’t even noticed in the cold air and the exhilaration of flying.

“Wow, how did you do this?” Iris asked.

“Do what?” Daphne breathed.

“Freeze your arms around my midsection.”

“Oh _Circe_ , I’m so sorry — I — I didn’t mean to —”

“What? No, don’t worry, I’m just impressed.”

Daphne stayed silent. 

“Here, I love this one,” Iris said, steering them towards a mountain.

Iris touched down.

“Thank God,” Daphne said, her boots touching the ground. 

“Er, Daphne?” Iris laughed.

“What?”

Iris gestured with her Quidditch gloves towards the frozen arms around her stomach.

“Oh, right,” Daphne said, and unstuck herself. Her arms still had ice all over them. 

Looked kinda beautiful, honestly, Iris thought. 

“Come on, this way,” Iris said.

Daphne followed along in her light-blue beauxbatons Quidditch uniform, breathing heavily.

“Here, look,” Iris said, gesturing towards a cave opening in the side of the mountain.

Daphne followed her inside — and came to a beautiful inner hot spring. 

Stalactites filled the ceiling, where small, glowing magical mushrooms grew in between, lighting up the whole cave with small dots of blue starlight. Some places the cave were very bright, others slightly dark, but nowhere was it like the pitch blackness it should be. Warm steam came up from the water, and the cave itself sounded _roomy_ , like the Prefect’s bathroom did when you filled it up with too much steam. 

“Wow,” she breathed. “Iris, this is — incredible. When did you find this?”

“This year, actually. It’s nice, right?”

‘It’s beautiful,” Daphne said, walking down to the plateau with the water. “Do you know how deep this is?”

“Nope.”

Iris walked around the cave. “I don’t think anybody has found this place before,” she patted the wall. “A shame, honestly.”

“Yes, well,” Daphne smiled grimly. “I doubt students are in the habit of flying up to the tallest snow-peaked mountains around Hogwarts and then nosing around everywhere.”

“Hey, I was looking for a gift for Remus!”

Daphne stuck out her tongue at her. 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Good!Mentor!Dumbledore, and I love Fem!Harry, so there u go.
> 
> Identifying the precise century of Goblin silver is something Sirius actually does in canon:
> 
> “This solid silver, mate?”  
> Yes,” said Sirius, surveying it with distaste. “Finest fifteenth-century goblin-wrought silver, embossed with the Black family crest.
> 
> Those Voldemort quotes are canon as well, all from GoF.
> 
> Canon Harry is also Horrified when he sees Snape fly - for the same reasons as Iris, I imagine:  
> "With a tingle of horror, Harry saw in the distance a huge, batlike shape flying through the darkness toward the perimeter wall."  
>   
> 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Iris sets fire to the Gryffindor table and Dumbledore considers poison.

**18th November, Breakfast, Gryffindor Table.**

“Pass me the orange juice, will you?” Ron asked.

Iris passed him the orange juice.

“And so, of course,” Iris continued, “the Thebian guild of potioneers didn’t like that, so they sent their strongest weapon to obstruct Dumbledore

“What did they send?” Ginny asked in trepidation.

“Bureaucrats.”

“No!” Ginny said.

“I know. But of course, little did they know they were dealing with Dumbledore, unrivalled clipper of red tape and composer of codswallop and rubbish. I don’t think I’ve ever seen somebody so confused as the bureaucrats were when Dumbledore started cross-referencing the code of Ur-Nammu with Hammurabi’s Script to explain why he had legal prerogative to access the city’s solar room.”

“Solar room?” Dean asked.

For once, Iris knew an answer. Ha, take that Daphne!

Wait, no, you’re thinking of Daphne again, Iris thought.

“It’s like this underground central maintenance room for the city of Thebes. It’s right in the middle of the city, which spreads around it like a circle, supposedly because that grants it certain arithmantic properties. The room has a microcosm of the entire city in it, where the unplotting and all the enchantments on the city flow from. That’s where Dumbledore and I were contracted to go to.”

“Wow,” Dean said.

“Yep,” Iris smiled.

The rest of the table charged into a different discussion, and Iris continued to eat her oatmeal.

She glanced over at the Slytherin table, seeing Daphne through the throng of green-on-black.

She really was gorgeous. So cool that she was Iris’ friend. A hot gay friend. Friend. Hot friend. Hot.

Iris particularly liked the way her hair —

Daphne glanced back across the great hall. They made eye contact for a split second until Iris hastily looked away. Gulp.

She was not staring! No, not this witch!

She distracted herself by taking some more oatmeal into her breakfast bowl — then suddenly heard the Great Hall increase in its commotion.

She looked up — and a great red beast was soaring from the owl windows directly down at her.

The bird landed on the table, knocking over the orange juice in a great splash, yet somehow not staining its scarlet-and-gold feathers.

“Fawkes!” she said with joy.

The phoenix thrilled a greeting.

“Iris!” Hermione said, levitating the tea, coffee, milk, and pumpkin juice away from Fawkes’ wingspan. “A phoenix can’t just land in the middle of breakfast!”

Ron was magicking orange juice off his robes.

“Where have you been?” Iris said, bringing her hands forward to nuzzle around his neck. He made another low thrilling noise.

He moved his beak to rest upon her forehead for a few seconds, and she laughed, eyes closed.

“Watch out you don’t step in my breakfast,” Iris said. “You already ruined Ron’s robes.”

Fawkes moved his head away, and thrilled.

“That’s a very narcissistic opinion of yourself,” Iris said, opening her eyes.

Ron was leaning away from Fawkes.

“Alright, fine, fine,” Iris smiled, and lit a wandless fire in her hands, stroking Fawkes’ plumage with it.

This was quite a sight — the flames engulfed Iris’ hands as if they were on fire, caressing up and down her fingers and wrist, white and yellow and orange covering her skin. And she was doing this in the middle of breakfast, flaming hands over the phoenix’s back.

Hermione had her head in her hands. “Why does it always have to be like this?”

Fawkes knocked over the porridge with his right leg.

And a golden amulet was unclasped from his claws, sliding over in front of Iris.

“Oh, what’s this?” Iris asked.

Fakwes thrilled aggressively.

“Alright, alright! I’ll put it on.”

She slid it over her head, and hid it under her robes so it touched the skin of her collarbones. It had a strange comforting warmth to it.

“Thank you for the gift,” she smiled

He thrilled imperiously.

“You should go say hello to Professor Dumbledore,” she smiled. "I think he's missed you."

* * *

**18th November, Breakfast, Slytherin Table.**

Daphne was breathing heavily.

Tracey was rubbing her shoulders.

“Relax,” Tracey said.

“What’s going on with Greengrass?” Theo said, coming to sit at the breakfast table. He looked over at the Phoenix on the Gryffindor Table. “Oh. Fire?”

“No,” Daphne whispered.

Pansy was delicately eating a tiny sausage. “Greengrass is just very attracted to the magically strong woman of Gryffindor. Swept off her feet, in fact.”

Daphne gulped. “A _phoenix_?” she said, hoarsely.

Draco Malfoy butted in, speaking in a low tone. “If you talk about the infallible, unerring, neoplatonically immutable virtues of The Girl Who Lived for the —”

“Bugger off,” Pansy said. “Don’t ruin the beauty of a girl in love.”

“Obsession, more like,” Draco replied.

“What’s the difference?” Pansy asked innocently.

Slytherins tended to either fall in love obsessively, or in a terribly avoidant fashion. No in-between. It is unknown if Salazar Slytherin intended his house to be the house of daddy issues.

Daphne was staring at Iris Potter — until Potter glanced at her from across the Great Hall, and Daphne quickly looked away.

“She caught me staring!” Daphne whispered, in agony.

“Oh, Merlin forbid,” Pansy said. “Imagine if she knew that you looked at her. It would ruin the friendship.”

“Pansy, please,” Tracey said, for Daphne was not taking the flaming Phoenix event particularly well.

“Oh. Right,” she said, brattiness receding, which was perhaps the highest extent of an apology you could get out of Pansy Parkinson.

* * *

**17th November, Somewhere in the air above Hogwarts.**

“This is so slow,” Iris complained, speeding one hundred miles an hour across the air.

“Merlin forbid we get there in twenty minutes instead of ten,” Daphne said.

They landed again on the mountain top, Daphne this time unfrazzled.

“I like the Beauxbatons Uniform, by the way,” Iris said, shaking her hair out of her ponytail.

“Thank you. My mother designed them for Beauxbatons twenty years back. I personally think they are quite the more charming.”

Iris thought so, too.

They walked towards the cave, Extension Charmed bag in hand.

“Do you play? Quidditch?” Iris asked.

“I think I would have some difficulties reigning in my … accidental magic.”

Iris frowned. She had never heard of that being a thing. Maybe Daphne was just embarrassed about her Quidditch skills — no, Daphne Greengrass would just tell her, surely. Or find some way to make herself seem superior for not playing Quidditch.

Daphne continued, “I haven’t had the opportunity to fly on broom that often, either. My family tends to prefer carriages.”

“Carriages? That sounds awfully slow.”

“Granian-drawn, I mean.”

“Oh! What, like the beauxbatons ones?”

“Yes.”

“You seem very involved with Beauxbatons,” Iris said.

Daphne was about to speak, but Iris interrupted. “I’m glad you went to Hogwarts, though.”

“You are?”

“What? Is it so weird I like your company?”

Daphne blushed. “Well, you are quite the odd creature. How much of a compliment is being esteemed by Iris Potter, I wonder? Maybe I should reconsider my life choices.”

“Sod off,” Iris said.

“I thought you wanted me to stay at Hogwarts?”

“Oh, you are — incorrigible — I try to compliment you, and you just, you turn it around, you — you — you _fiend_.”

“ _Fiend?”_ Daphne laughed. “Are you assimilating my vocabulary?”

Iris fumed.

In reality, Iris was just too shy to use any harsher swear word. Imagine if she had called Daphne Greengrass _cock_.

“Thank you though,” Daphne said. “I appreciate it.”

Iris grumbled, trying to pretend she was busy adjusting the leftover ponytail crinkles in her wavy black hair.

Daphne looked on in amusement.

They arrived at the opening to the cave.

“Any ideas for a name for this place?” Iris asked

“It is an epistemological fallacy to believe that categorizing things affords us an understanding of them,” Daphne said.

Iris was so confused. “What?”

“I’m sure we’ll find one naturally,” Daphne smiled enigmatically, and went into the cave.

Iris sighed and went after her.

They set the Extension Charmed bag on the ground and started unpacking the materials.

Amongst them were several large and small Gryffindor and Slytherin banners which Daphne levitated to hang on the walls

“And they said house unity was impossible,” Daphne said, looking up at the wall with scarlet-gold and black-green-silver paraphernalia.

“Who?” Iris asked.

“What?”

“Who said it was impossible?”

Daphne frowned. _“_ They. You know, in a general sense. _”_

“Oh.”

“The general contextual subtleties and nuances of the atmosphere of Hogwarts imparted on us by the student body.”

“Oh. Right.”

Why did I have to make it so awkward? Daphne and Iris thought to themselves, simultaneously.

Daphne looked at Iris with an awkward expression, but — seeing it reflected back — began to laugh.

Iris grinned.

She watched Daphne proceed to unpack the rest of the furniture for their new hideout.

Iris had at one point after second year toyed with the idea of making the Chamber of Secrets a secret hideout for her, Ron and Hermione — maybe if she installed some carpets and made it less humid, somehow, it could be a cool place.

But the memories involved didn’t exactly make for a relaxing evening; a near-death experience, an antediluvian monster, Ginny almost dying, and … the bizarrely preppy young Lord Voldemort, killer of her parents.

What a weird guy, honestly, that Tom. How did he even manage to get out of bed each morning with such a big ego? Did he go to the mirror and stare into it and think about how he was going to rule the world? Jesus. Iris could barely remember to put on the skincare Daphne gave her, let alone any plans for world domination.

If she tried to think about ruling the world while going to the bathroom she’d probably end up stepping her right leg into the toilet out of absentmindedness. She hoped Voldemort stuck his right leg in the toilet.

Daphne was putting down two beach recliners on one of the lower ledges that were close to the warm water.

Iris walked down to her. “What, are you gonna like, sun-tan yourself? With darkness? Make yourself paler, maybe?”

Daphne smiled. “Look,” she said, and picked up a small crystal ball she had placed on the ground.

Daphne put the end of her white wand to it — and the small crystal ball turned into a warm, small ball of artificial light.

“Woah,” Iris said.

“It doesn’t tan you, though,” Daphne said. “But it’s quite nice.” She magicked the artificial sun to float around the beach recliners.

They went on to put down Gryffindor and Slytherin carpets on the floor, magically charming them to not get destroyed by the humidity.

Daphne put up some dark wood Slytherin bookshelves, and Iris went to the furthest reaches of the cave — one that had a cozy alcove — and set up a cauldron and various potioneering equipment there.

“Oh, by the way,” Daphne said, and pulled some lanterns out of the Extension Charmed bag. “Magical dehumidifiers,” she smiled, and put them up around the walls.

Wow, Iris thought. Daphne really knew everything.

* * *

**18th November, Hogwarts Grounds.**

Having landed on the ground, they walked back up to the castle, Iris with her illegal firebolt over her shoulder.

“Did you see the Prophet, by the way?”

“Huh?” Daphne said.

“The bit about Professor Dumbledore and I starting a magical charity.”

“Oh. I — was — distracted.”

Iris frowned. What would she be distracted by? Did Daphne notice her staring?

Iris herself was distracted however by a truly bizarre commotion near the forest edge.

“What’s going on there?” Iris asked.

A student was sitting on the shoulders of another student, jostling with a camera and trying to take photographs of the unicorn herd.

“Oh,” Daphne frowned. “Is that — oh _Circe_ , it’s Parkinson.”

The student underneath ran around as her rider barked orders.

“Oh, why is she making Trace — why — why aren’t they using brooms?” Daphne frowned, and stomped towards the gathering.

They came by a hill where a tall handsome boy was lying on the grass, looking out over the spectacle.

“Blaise,” Daphne said.

“Kisses,” Blaise said. “Greengrass and Iris Potter. A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.”

“Hi,” Iris smiled.

“Why aren’t they using brooms?” Daphne asked.

In the distance, Iris could hear Pansy Parkinson shouting “ _Left_!”

“Well, Draco went to get one, actually. Pansy just could not wait. Declared that she had to get the right angles, no matter the cost.”

Blaise looked over at Pansy commanding Tracey around. "In this case, I believe the cost is the numbing charms for Davis' back pain tomorrow."

Wait, Malfoy went to get broom? Iris thought.

And as if incanting the curse herself, Draco Malfoy trudged over the hill with a broom.

“ _You_! _”_ he intoned upon seeing Iris. “What are _you_ doing here?”

Daphne took hold of Iris’ hand. “She’s with me.”

Iris' heart was beating very quickly.

“Draco, you are being terribly rude,” Blaise said. “Please say hello to Potter and Greengrass.”

“At least give me the time to enjoy the taste of a mild transgression, Blaise, ” Draco said. “Fine. Greengrass, _Potter_ , I greet you well, et cetera et cetera.” Draco rolled his eyes. “Now let me go and save Davis from her equestrianism.”

“ _Move orthogonally_!” Parkinson shouted in the distance.

Daphne narrowed her eyes, and went along with Draco while dragging Iris along by the hand.

Iris did not complain. (Handholding!)

Pansy noticed them coming up. “Oh, the Girl-Who-Lived.”

“Pansy, get down,” Daphne said.

“Fine, fine,” Pansy said. “And I see you’ve brought a broom, Draco. Much appreciated.”

Draco dropped the broom on the ground. “My job here is done,” he said, and walked back towards Blaise.

But he didn't do anything? Iris thought.

“Hi, Daph,” Tracey said, holding onto Pansy’s legs.

Tracey put Pansy down on the ground.

“Don’t let her use you like that,” Daphne whispered to Tracey.

“It’s fine, I just wanted to help,” Tracey said.

“That’s the point. Don’t let her. Unicorn photography can wait.”

“Urgh, don’t be such a killjoy, Greengrass,” Pansy said, standing up from the ground. “Tracey was helping me get some very good photographs. Anyway” — Pansy looked down at Daphne holding Iris’ hand — “oh.”

“Yes?” Daphne challenged her.

Pansy grinned, a sight Daphne had not seen in a long time. “Nothing. Just happy for you.”

Daphne lifted an eyebrow.

What were they talking about? Iris thought.

“Do not do that to Tracey again,” Daphne said.

“Tracey can make her own decisions,” Pansy said. “But as you wish.”

“Good,” Daphne sighed. “Anyway, Pansy, Trace, meet Iris.”

“Hello?” Iris said, moving out from the back of Daphne to stand at her side.

“Hi,” Tracey smiled.

“Ah, we’ve heard so much about you!” Pansy said. “Iris this, Iris that, Iris my —”

“Don’t make me hex you, Pansy,” Daphne said.

“What? I’m sure Potter is very happy that you think of her. Right, Potter?” Pansy asked.

“I — er — I — suppose?” Iris said.

“See? All is well.”

Iris noticed Daphne suddenly tense, as if a realization had come upon her. And suddenly she appeared to be in a great hurry to get Iris away from Pansy Parkinson. 

"Pansy, Trace, I will see you tonight at dinner. Enjoy your photography, Pansy. Goodbye," she said, dragging Iris off. 

Pansy's eyebrows went up as far as they could.

"And don't do anything to Trace, Pansy!" Daphne yelled.

"That was a very quick goodbye," Iris said, being dragged along still.

"Yes," Daphne said quickly. "Anyway, let's get back to the castle."

What happened? Was Pansy going to reveal something about Daphne that she didn't want Iris knowing? Like that she hated balsamic vinegar or something?

Daphne was still holding her hand though, which was very very pleasant indeed, so Iris let herself be dragged up to the castle by her gorgeous blonde crush.

* * *

**19th November, Headmaster’s Office.**

Dumbledore accepted a feather from Fawkes.

“Thank you, my dear friend. My socks were growing cold.”

Dumbledore actually used Fawkes’ discarded feathers for warming his socks in his drawers. Iris had seen it.

Dumbledore smiled warmly. “Well, Iris, the charity received a great reception. I am as always very proud of you.”

Fawkes thrilled.

Yet the office was otherwise silent.

Iris was staring out the windows, looking out over the grounds.

“Hmm?” Dumbledore asked.

Iris was still silent.

Dumbledore looked to Fawkes, then back at Iris.

“What might be wrong, Iris?”

“I just — I still feel like I’m still not doing enough.”

Dumbledore peered at her over his half-moon glasses. “I dare say you’ve done things which very, very few witches are capable of. Defeating Tom, walking alone to the forest to —”

“Yeah, yeah,” Iris interrupted him. “It’s just — well, I move so quickly in our studies, Professor, that … it makes me … I feel bad about all the time I wasted procrastinating instead of studying, when I was younger. What if I could have done more?”

"Iris. Do not beat yourself up. When you plant a silver flower, you do not blame the flower if it does not grow well. You look into the reasons why it is not doing well — it may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the flower. It is not your fault that you did not have the tools to deal with your situation — if anything, it is a testament to your character that you turned out to be such a uncommonly marvellous person. And despite of all the suffering you have endured under the care of your Aunt, all the trials you have endured at Hogwarts, you remain pure of heart."

Iris was silent still.

"You must view your first years at Hogwarts like that of the silver flower. And — Iris, would you think of others the same? Would you blame them for not studying enough? For not having done more? Is the lack of fertilizer, water or sun their fault?”

"No, I wouldn't blame them," Iris sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Indeed I am,” Dumbledore said.

Iris rolled her eyes.

“Better?” he asked

“Better,” she smiled.

He held out his lemon drop case and she took one.

She turned it around in her mouth. “Do you lace these with loyalty potions?”

“Hmm?”

“Or like love potions… I don’t know.”

Dumbledore frowned. “You are saying, out of all the tools available to me magically, I would choose to use crude loyalty potions in candy which I can only give to anybody who visits my office and which they can refuse at will?”

“Yes. The avenue they would least suspect.”

“Hmmm,” Dumbledore said. He looked at his lemon drop case. “Maybe I _should_ poison them,” he whispered.

“Hey, don’t joke about poisons while I'm eating the food in question."

“Oh, yes, I’m being terribly rude.”

The sun shined into the office, coating Dumbledore's instruments of thought and magic in resplendent light — moments of calmness and peace like these were some of her most enjoyable moments with Dumbledore.

“Where are we going today?” she asked.

“We’re heading to Vienna to investigate a burglary of their library.”

“A burglary? Cool.”

* * *

**19th November, Magical Bohemia.**

They had portkeyed into one of the Magical Elector-Queen of Bohemia’s royal residences, to which they had been granted eternal privileged access to after their services to her — which numbered, amongst many, saving her daughter from a striga attack.

“Split?” Dumbledore asked, holding the portkey bounty bar.

“Sure,” Iris said.

Dumbledore broke it in two and gave Iris half.

“So are we gonna take another portkey?” she asked, chewing on the bounty bar.

“Not this time,” Dumbledore said.

She followed Dumbledore out to … a landing pad?

“We’re flying?”

“Indeed. And I daresay you are the better flier of us two.”

He gestured to a broom which had a tag-along seat on the side.

Iris grinned.

* * *

**19th November Somewhere above Vienna.**

“Just down here, right?” Iris asked over the wind.

“I believe so,” Dumbledore said, holding Fawkes to his chest.

Fawkes was curiously looking out over the side of the seat, quite unfamiliar to being a passenger of flying.

They went down through the clouds, landing at a magical broom checkpoint.

Fawkes flew up on Dumbledore’s shoulders, and they paid their broomshed fees.

They went out into the city proper.

Magical Vienna was beautiful.

Magical Vienna was the architectural epitome of Magical Austria-Hungary.

Crystal fountains lined the cobbled streets, cafes and storefronts and apartments were decorated in resplendent Magical Rococo, wizards and witches milling to and fro. Iris could almost taste the fresh-baked bread and the viennese coffee on the air.

Iris was sure Daphne probably held several strong opinions on this city, but she wasn’t sure in what direction.

Unfortunately they did not have much time for sightseeing, and headed quickly for the grandiose library at the end of a sidestreet. It had a beautiful lush field of grass in front of it, with several Royal Aurors milling about the cobbled pathways through the greens. A very important-looking official with a tall bearskin cap came up to them.

“Grand Wizard Dumbledore. And the Girl-Who-Lived,” he said robotically. “Follow me.”

Dumbledore whispered something to Fawkes, and the Phoenix took flight into the air.

Iris followed Dumbledore through the cobbled pathways, and up the marble steps to the library.

If Magical Vienna was beautiful, the city’s library was even more so. Fashioned in white and gold, intricate magical rococo patterns and paintings decorated every room. It looked much like what Iris had seen muggle palaces look like in those National Geographic magazines she stole from Hermione in third year when Iris was dreadfully bored. Except in this case, the decorations moved and changed with the rhythm of magic itself.

Her eyes flit around with rapt attention as they passed through the large halls and rooms, filled with bookshelves, items on exposition, bookshelves, paintings, bookshelves, aurors, and bookshelves.

The bearskin official eventually showed them to a pair of large double doors which had been blocked off by magical red tape.

Iris could faintly smell the singed electricity of magic in the air — dark magic.

She looked at Dumbledore. He had noticed the same.

The official made the red tape draw back to the sides of the door and led them inside — where they found utter magical catastrophe.

Bookshelves were splintered and lying on the floor, broken marble stones were caught in suspended magical animation, the force of the magic expended keeping them yet active. Austrian wizards were trying to deal with another constantly vibrating pillar which was threatening to fall upon them, or explode in its own frustration.

“Ah,” Dumbledore said, moving towards the struggling wizards. “How unfortunate. I assume the books were saved though?”

“Ja. The protective charms put on them in 1939 are still in effect.”

“Very well,” Dumbledore said. He took out the Elder Wand.

Iris took out her wand and attempted to help as well, but her efforts — and the efforts of the Austrian wizards around her — were paltry in comparison to Dumbledore.

Wizards as great as Dumbledore could command matter to such an extent that the elements themselves bent to their will. This meant that any duels _between_ great wizards were in every sense sublime, often dealing with great feats of elemental magic that could, if they chose, wreck great havoc around the environment around them.

The duel between Tom and Dumbledore in the ministry was an example of both wizards trying to keep the destruction around them to a (relative) minimum. Another factor preventing great environmental havoc were the complex enchantments laid upon the British Ministry of Magic itself, and the degree of imbued magic it had assimilated over the years by magical activity flowing through it — much like Hogwarts — which made it difficult for even the greatest wizards to break down.

But for things that were merely natural... Iris had read about how a Swiss mountain had collapsed over the hours of the duel between Grindelwald and Dumbledore.

Luckily for the stability of magical history, no wizards had been as great as Grindelwald, Voldemort and Dumbledore. Mountain destruction was a previously unheard of duelling event. And presumably unheard for the future as well, unless Daphne turned evil.

Wait, no, Daphne wasn’t that talented, stop being biased, Iris.

They continued to clean up and fix the section of the library, Dumbledore examining the leftover traces of Dark Magic in the room.

“I believe from this that you would have found a wardstone?” he asked the official.

“Ja. It is in the office of the High Philosopher.”

“Oho,” Dumbledore said. “I haven’t seen Georg in several years. Well, Iris, I believe we have assimilated all the information we need here. I assume the office is still on the same floor as it was eight years ago?”

“Ja.”

“Excellent,” Dumbledore said, and they went up to the upper floor after the bearskin official robotically thanked them for their efforts.

“Well, he wasn’t very happy,” Iris said. “Or emotional. Is it an Viennese thing?”

“Iris.”

“Okay, okay, sorry.”

They went up the grand staircases, passing by floors which Dumbledore said contained lecture rooms, until they came to a long beautiful hallway decorated with dark oak.

Dumbledore stopped at a door that said **GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL** , followed by a ton of winding abbreviations that Iris assumed were academic titles. Like Dumbledore’s G. Wiz.

“Is this your friend Georg?”

“It is indeed,” Dumbledore said, and knocked softly.

A tiny scroll printed out of the side of the door.

STATE YOUR ONTOLOGY, it said.

“Hmm,” Dumbledore said, and wrote a long, meandering answer with the attached quill.

He signed his name on it, and the scroll was printed back into the crevice it came from.

A soft ding was heard, and a gasp.

“Old friend! Come in!” Iris heard a voice say.

Dumbledore opened the door.

Inside was a room _filled_ with books. The walls _were_ bookshelves. There were so many books in here Iris hardly doubt she could read them in a lifetime, and she had just spent the day walking around in a gigantic library. Gulp.

Behind a great desk was a very, very, very, very old wizard with a cravat and a brown coat. He looked very important, Iris thought.

He smiled warmly upon seeing Dumbledore. “How glad I am to see your face, old friend. It has been too many years! You must visit more often.”

“Well, I do try to write,” Dumbledore said.

“And the Girl-Who-Lived!” Hegel said. “A pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. Your accomplishments in the field of magic are echoed over the continent.”

“My accomplishments?” Iris said, deer caught in the headlights_

“No need for humility, Miss Potter. Defeating a Dark Lord at seventeen? And the speed of your advancements under Dumbledore, the papers he has been publishing lately — it makes my heart warm." 

Iris' brain flashed back to her earlier conversation with Dumbledore about feeling like garbage. 

Hegel went on. "Albus — I have a few new developments we must discuss before you leave, but I assume you came for the wardstone?”

“Indeed.”

Hegel pulled out a long gnarly wand, levitating a crystal with a stone in it up from his drawer and towards Dumbledore.

“I had to enclose it in this crystal of absolute spirit to prevent its dissolution.”

“Oho,” Dumbledore said, turning the crystal over in his hand. “This is quite a nasty piece of work. I do believe we will have to hire a consultant.” His moustache twitched. “I have just the right Dark Wizard in mind, Iris.”

Oh no, Iris gulped, for she knew who they were going to visit.

* * *

**19th November, Slytherin Common Room**

Tracey went through the common room, listening briefly to the soothing notes of Nott’s piano practice. Today it was Mendelssohn.

She entered the dorms to find Pansy looking through a photo album of her family, and Daphne furiously scribbling away in her Iris J. Potter notebook.

Tracey wasn’t sure whether scribbling away in her weird stalker notebook was an appropriate coping mechanism for when the Girl-Who-Lived was off with Dumbledore, but she didn’t want to control Daphne’s decisions.

“Tracey, a moment,” Pansy said.

Tracey walked over to Pansy. She was tracing the outlines of a photograph of her cousin, a cursebreaker for Swedish Gringotts.

“Look at her, Tracey! It's like she’s ten years ahead of me,” she said sadly.

“Pansy, she _is_ ten years ahead of you. She’s twenty-eight,” Tracey said.

“Yes, isn’t it just awful,” Pansy said.

Tracey sighed.

“Girls,” Daphne said, still scribbling furiously. “I need to find a way to get good firewhiskey into this castle.”

“Wouldn’t you be the one who would know how to get through the enchantments?” Tracey asked.

“It’s impossible. I think I need to find a teacher to get it from — there is Slughorn, and he has a modicum of taste in drink — after all, he buys from Father — but he doesn’t enjoy firewhiskey, which I _know_ that Iris prefers.”

Tracey and Pansy looked worriedly at each other.

“Are you really going to raid a teacher’s office for firewhiskey? Don’t you think that’s a bit too much?”

Pansy rolled her eyes. “God forbid Greengrass raids Filch’s stores.”

“Aha!” Daphne said. “Excellent idea, Pansy!”

“Oh for Merlin’s sake Daphne,” Pansy said, putting her hand over her forehead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fan art by my friend Scyntrus.
> 
> Thanks to [system_f](https://archiveofourown.org/users/system_f/pseuds/system_f) for mentioning the german idealist philosopher Hegel in their review, which made me realize I could make him a 200-year old Wizard. And as [Sage_Nameless](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sage_Nameless/pseuds/Sage_Nameless) mentioned in their review, we will see him squabble with wizarding Schopenhauer. 
> 
> If you want to see how I imagine magical Vienna looks, google "rococo exterior."
> 
> "Luckily for the stability of magical history, no wizards had been as great as Grindelwald, Voldemort and Dumbledore"  
> this is actually canon:  
> "The name of Grindelwald is justly famous: In a list of Most Dangerous Dark Wizards of All Time, he would miss out on the top spot only because You-Know-Who arrived, a generation later, to steal his crown." (DH)
> 
> "They say, still, that no Wizarding duel ever matched that between Dumbledore and Grindelwald in 1945. Those who witnessed it have written of the terror and the awe they felt as they watched these two extraordinary wizards do battle." (DH)  
>   
> 


End file.
